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Chapter Text

The hall outside the Engineering Department pulses—sharp, volatile, as if a live wire skinned bare and thrumming with anticipation. Today, the air hums with a different charge. Hushed murmurs ripple through the students like wind through tall grass, all eyes angled towards a singular piece of paper glued to the wall with all the ceremonial gravitas of a public execution post. The semester rankings are up.

Viktor lingers at the edge of the crowd with the stoic resignation of a man already preparing himself for disappointment. His frame is brittle, sharpened by sleepless nights and pressure that speaks only in silence. There’s a glint in his eyes that’s less fire, more steel—weathered, unyielding.

He does not push forward to see. He does not need to. He already knows.

His name is always there, just a whisper beneath the top. Always close enough to smell victory, never close enough to taste it.

The paper ridicules him when he finally takes a glance:

#1 – Jayce Talis

#2 – Viktor (Surname Unlisted)

He reads it once. Twice. A third time, as if the weight of repetition might change its meaning. But the words don’t blur. They stay solid and smug, the letters sneering at his personal suffering.

As always. As expected.

Jayce, the golden boy, the Academy’s walking sunbeam, ranks first—again. Without the effort, without the nights spent hunched over textbooks until the spine breaks, without the extra shifts in Heimerdinger’s lab or the cheap instant noodles eaten cold over formulas that blur into scripture. Jayce is just the perfect kind of student all professors adore. The perfect type of boy the campus either wants to befriend or share a bed with. He has that sheen, that glow, as if even light is drawn to him, helpless in its affection.

Viktor hates him.

He pivots sharply, coat flaring behind him like the final sweep of a curtain on a bitter performance, and disappears down the stairwell. The heels of his shoes echo with the quiet percussion of his self-deprecation. He pulls out his phone and swiftly writes a text to Mel:

(02:24 PM): Fuck my life

Mel responds in an instant.

(02:24 PM): well hello to you too

(02:24 PM): Golden Boy ranked first again. Even after missing two deadlines and joking about how a Bernoulli equation looks like an Egyptian myth in class.

(02:24 PM): maybe the equation was mythical

(02:24 PM): like your dream of ever beating him

Viktor rolls his eyes. His fingers dance against the screen with the desperation of a man trying to salvage his wounded ego.

(02:25 PM): If I disappear, it’s because I’ve been arrested for homicide.

(02:25 PM): oh, viktor

(02:25 PM): you’ll make a very stylish convict

Mel responds with a sticker of a smiling cat giving a thumbs up. Viktor stares at it, sighs like he’s aged five years, and tucks the phone away to the depths of his pocket.

It’s not just the ranking. It’s what it means. That tiniest, sliver of distance. That breath of difference. A taunt, carved in ink. A reminder that no matter how sharp his intellect, how meticulous his work, how furiously his mind races—he’s always one step behind the boy born already standing on a pedestal.

Jayce Talis arrives like a summer storm dressed in sunshine. The world as it is, at least to Viktor, is charmed into submission by a young boy who is yet to realize the gravity of his power. Conversations pause at Jayce’s lightest approach, and the buzzing fluorescents overhead flicker with approval in his wake. Jayce leaves prints on the ground where he walks. He moves with the careless grace of someone used to admiration, whose confidence is not learned but inherited, folded neatly into his genes alongside charisma and a jawline sculpted by divine intent.

His hair is tousled just enough to look unintentional, but not enough to suggest he hasn’t checked the mirror three times before leaving his dorm. His hoodie sleeves are rolled to the elbows, showcasing forearms dusted with faint burn marks and grease stains from his latest personal project—an AI armature that, as far as Viktor can tell, serves no discernable purpose other than to give him a wave or two every time he walks into the lab.

As if summoned by Viktor’s utter disdain, Jayce spots him the moment he passes the stairwell.

“Well, if it isn’t my favorite storm cloud,” Jayce says, draping himself against the railing with all the poise of a man sidling up to a bar—as if they’re old friends and not rivals with inconveniently entangled fates.

“Did you come to gloat,” Viktor replies flatly, “or do you do that naturally by existing?”

Jayce lets out a laugh—bright, boyish, infuriatingly warm. The sound sets Viktor’s teeth on edge. It burrows under his skin, a reminder of everything he resents; Jayce’s laughter is too light, too genuine, too easy.

“Can’t a guy just say hi?” Jayce asks, feigning offense with theatrical flourish.

“No,” Viktor’s answer is quick, piercing. “You lost that privilege the moment you answered a quantum mechanics question with, and I quote, ‘It’s all about the vibes’.”

Jayce shrugs, a gesture made more juvenile by the exaggerated movement of his shoulders. “Still got the full class cheering for that answer.”

“And the system continues to rot,” Viktor mutters, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Remind me again how you’ve survived this long without the Academy throwing you out of a window?”

“I smile a lot,” Jayce says. “You should try it sometime. I think it’ll look good on your mouth.”

Viktor finally turns to face him, his expression unreadable except for the quiet fury burning in his eyes. “I’ll smile when I’m standing on the podium you think belongs to you.”

For a moment, Jayce falters. The grin slips, just slightly, like a window catching the wind. A blink of something real stutters across his face, and then it’s gone, buried under the same frustrating, charming confidence.

“Looking forward to it, V,” he says, voice softer now. “Really.”

Viktor doesn’t answer. His silence feels like the tightening of a spring.

Jayce melts into the sticky purgatory that is his mattress, limbs tangled in a pile of sheets made heavy by sweat. The windows are open, but the breeze is a lie—thick with the scent of asphalt, sun-warmed metal, and the distant tang of melting plastic. Outside, the world simmers: cicadas scream in the distance like tiny dying machines, and the heat hangs in the air like an unwanted roommate, presses down on everything with damp, relentless fingers.

He rolls on his back, shirtless, one leg thrown lazily over the other. His phone hovers just above his face, his grip slipping now and then from the sweat on his palms. Jayce blinks at the screen, squinting at the glare of sunlight that pours through the blinds in stripes. It is far too hot to move, let alone think, and yet—

He taps the group chat with Vi and Caitlyn open, thumb hovering as he debated how much self-respect he is willing to part with today. Not much, apparently.

Vi (11:04 AM): so… viktor still hates ur face?

Jayce snorts, a sound that startles even him in the sweltering quiet. His thumbs fly across the keyboard without hesitation.

Jayce (11:07 AM): he looked at me like he was weighing the cost of murder against academic suspension

Caitlyn (11:07 AM): Sounds like a promising foundation for romance

Jayce stares at the message a moment longer than necessary.

God, if only.

Jayce (11:08 AM): i wish

Vi (11:10 AM): wait… srsly???

Jayce bites the inside of his cheek. He can play it off again, reduce it to a joke like the previous times it slipped from him. But not now, not today. The terrible, terrible weather has settled somewhere inside him, loosening the threads of his usual restraint. Today, the truth is buzzing under his skin like caffeine and bad decisions waiting to happen.

Jayce (11:11 AM): he’s intense

Jayce (11:11 AM): and brilliant

Jayce (11:11 AM): and infuriating

Jayce (11:11 AM): but like, hot about it

He grins, teeth sinking into his bottom lip as he opens his camera roll. His finger lands on a blurry, half-zoomed photo of Viktor mid-glare from the stairwell—sharp eyes narrowed, lips pursed in perpetual judgment. Jayce had taken it stealthily yesterday. For research purposes, he told himself.

Jayce hits send.

Jayce (11:14 AM): look at this, this is not the face of a man in hate

Jayce (11:14 AM): that’s yearning, in disguise

Caitlyn (11:15 AM): That’s a restraining order in disguise

Vi (11:15 AM): im rooting for u, jayce

Vi (11:15 AM): but also, this is gonna crash and burn spectacularly, lmao

Jayce lets the phone drop to his chest, still grinning like a fool. He is vaguely aware of how ridiculous he looks, splayed out like a sunstruck idiot, beaming at his cracked ceiling while sweat collects at the small of his back. He should probably be worried. He should probably stop.

Instead, all he can think about is the way Viktor’s voice dips when he is annoyed—gritty and golden, like sandpaper and honey—and how Jayce has never wanted to win against someone so badly in his life, if only to earn Viktor’s gaze. If winning means that Viktor will have his eyes on him, and maybe, just maybe, see him.

Jayce is, without a doubt, screwed.

The bell above the café door gives a tired jingle as Viktor steps inside, brushing a curl of wind-swept hair out of his eyes. The scent of roasted coffee beans, burnt sugar, and the faint bite of citrus peel envelops him in a warm, sweet cloud. The place is dim and cozy, all amber lighting and worn furniture, its walls plastered with mismatched art and flyers for local open mics no one attends. There is jazz music drifting from the speakers, and Viktor tilts his ears if only to catch the rhythm better. It’s one of the few kinds of noise that doesn’t exhaust him.

It does not take long before he spots Mel.

She’s curled into the far corner booth by the window, half-obscured by a hanging plant and her own impossible coolness. One booted leg is crossed over the other, her spine slouched just enough to look effortless, and a thick paperback—another book on politics, no doubt—rests open in her lap.

He considers Mel a friend. The sole exception in a world that, in Viktor’s opinion, talks too much and listens too little. He doesn't understand how she tolerates political science—so much of it seems built on performance, on carefully chosen phrasing and moral gymnastics—but he respects her intellect enough to overlook the fact that half her classmates seem to enjoy hearing themselves speak more than breathing.

He slides into the booth across from her with the slow, deliberate grace of someone already exhausted by the day—and it’s barely noon.

A waiter appears then, notepad in hand.

“I’ll have an espresso, please,” Mel says without looking up, her eyes still tracing the words on her book.

“Chamomile tea,” Viktor mutters. He offers the waiter a polite smile.

Mel raises a finely shaped brow, suppressing a laugh. “You’re too young to order like my widowed grandma, Viktor.”

“It’s for my sleep,” he replies, a touch defensive, already fishing out a stack of readings and half-scribbled problem sets he knows he won’t have time to finish later. He spreads them across the table like cards in a losing hand.

The waiter nods and vanishes, leaving them in a companionable silence that stretches just long enough to be comfortable.

Finally, Viktor speaks.

“Professor Heimerdinger welcomed another engineering student to manage in the lab today. Guess who.”

Mel does not miss a beat. “Talis?”

Viktor groans like the name physically injures him. “The Golden Brat himself. He strutted in late, called a capacitor a ‘zappy boy’, and then flirted with the spectrometer.”

Mel looks up now, lips curling into something halfway between amusement and disbelief. “Sounds like true love.”

“I will drown myself in the acid wash tank,” Viktor deadpans. His hands move to organize his papers again, but his fingers twitch slightly, betraying a restlessness he does not have time to name. There’s a pinched look around his eyes—tight, tired, the beginning of a headache that hasn’t quite arrived but promises to.

“Please refrain from committing any crime until after you graduate.” Mel says, flipping through a page.

Viktor scowls. “If he breathes near my data one more time, I’m defecting to Zaun.”

"In light of recent advancements in adaptive biotech,” Heimerdinger begins, his voice clipped but demanding, “propose how moral responsibility shifts in the presence of sentient design."

He stands at the front of the classroom, bathed in the warm spill of morning light that filters through tall, dust-flecked windows. The glow catches on the rim of his spectacles and outlines his wild white curls like a halo of static.

After a passing heartbeat, Jayce raises his hand.

His voice is easy and assured when it comes, like he’s tossing out an idea over brunch rather than dissecting bioethics in front of a full room. “I think it’s still ultimately the creator’s responsibility,” he says. “Sentience does not absolve origin.”

There’s a murmur of agreement. Viktor glimpses a few students nod. One girl, to his horror, taps notes into her tablet with something perilously close to a dreamy sigh.

Viktor exhales sharply through his nose. Without bothering to stand from his seat, he contends, “That argument is convenient until your creation starts making decisions you didn’t program. If something can think independently, it can choose independently. The weight of responsibility shifts.”

Jayce turns to him, slow and casual, a grin blossoming at the corners of his mouth like a challenge in full bloom. “So if I build a system with free will, and it decides to set the lab on fire, it’s not my fault?”

“If you engineered it poorly, no,” Viktor shoots back, tempered even in the face of debate. “But if the fire was the result of its own rationale, you are not the arsonist. You are simply the idiot who built one.”

Laughter ripples through the room. Jayce raises a brow, tilts his head. “Right. I must’ve missed the part where giving something intelligence makes you immune to consequences.”

“It doesn’t,” Viktor says. “It makes the consequences shared. Not inherited.”

His voice catches slightly on that last word—inherited—his accent curling around it with deliberate force. The emphasis lands like a subtle blow, not obvious enough for most to catch, but pointed enough for Jayce to feel. A barb laced in intellect. A dig into his legacy.

“Mr. Talis… and Viktor,” Heimerdinger interjects before either can escalate. His voice is mild, but carries the weight of finality.

There’s a beat of silence. A collective inhale.

“I have been meaning to announce this to the two of you in private, but given the—ah—spectacle you just unleashed in this class, I believe this seems a good time as any.” He says, eyes twinkling with a strange mirth.

Viktor feels his stomach twist. In his seat, Jayce straightens as though preparing for impact.

Heimerdinger beams, “The two of you, the top-performing students from the department of engineering, are chosen to represent Piltover Academy for the upcoming Innovator’s Competition.”

The words fall like gravel.

Jayce lifts his head slowly, like a soldier hearing his name drawn in lottery. His mouth parts, but no sound comes.

Viktor does not move. His expression stays unnervingly still—unblinking, unreadable, too quiet to be calm.

Then—crack.

The pencil snaps clean in his hand.

“I expect great things.” Heimerdinger announces, still aglow with enthusiasm, utterly oblivious to the blossoming tension between his two students. “The future of innovation lies in collaboration!”

Jayce dares a glance at Viktor. The gesture is laced in caution, as if he’s approaching a sleeping beast.

“Guess we’re partners now,” he says, his voice quieter than before. It clings to his face like something ill-fitting, fraying at the edges with hesitation.

Viktor does not look at him.

He’s already calculating how long it would take to fake his own death.

Chapter Text

The door slams open with the force of someone making a dramatic entrance on purpose.

“Heimerdinger has lost his mind.”

Jayce barrels into the apartment in a storm of limbs, wind, and panic, the messenger bag slung over his shoulder swinging wide and nearly decapitating a floor lamp in his wake.

Vi glances up mid-chew from her sprawl across the cushions, a half-eaten slice of pepperoni pizza suspended between her fingers and her open mouth. Next to her, Caitlyn sits neatly cross-legged with a well-thumbed copy of The Ethics of Enforcement balanced on her knees. She doesn’t look up right away—just calmly slides a bookmark into place before lifting a single unimpressed eyebrow.

Vi chews, swallows, and gestures vaguely towards Jayce. “Please tell me this is somehow about Viktor.”

Jayce breaks into a guttural sound—loud, theatrical, the kind that seems to start in his soul—and collapses face-first into the couch cushions like he’s trying to physically bury the memory that brought him here.

“It’s about Viktor.” He mumbles into the fabric.

Caitlyn snaps her book shut with a soft but menacing thwap. “You finally confessed? Did he call you delusional?”

Jayce groans again, flopping sideways with the full weight of someone burdened by a mid-life crisis at twenty-one. “No. Worse. Heimerdinger paired us together.”

A pause.

“…For the Innovator’s Competition.”

Vi lets out a low, gleeful whistle. Her hands shoot to the air flailing. “Oh, we are so back.”

“We are not ‘so back’, what,” Jayce hisses, voice muffled by a small pillow he’s now clutching like a lifeline. “Viktor’s going to murder me. Or out-logic me into an early grave.”

Caitlyn sets her book aside and leans forward, hands folded in a way that reminds Jayce of dangerous ideas. “You’ve been manifesting this exact scenario for months. Don’t pretend you’re not thrilled.”

Jayce sits up just enough to glare at her. “I am not thrilled. I’m—terrified. This is Viktor. You’ve seen how he glares at me. His eyes do that squinty ‘I’m calculating the square root of your soul’ thing.”

“Okay, Romeo, enough with the sexy talk,” Vi says, laughing. “So what’s the actual issue? You get to spend months in close proximity to the absolute crush of your life, surrounded by caffeine, competition, and high-stakes stress. That’s literally your mating ground.”

“It’s not—” Jayce groans for the third time, slumping backwards. “He hates me.”

“He doesn’t hate you,” Caitlyn says, voice soft but firm.

“He literally called me a ‘reckless golden brat’ last week.”

Vi shrugs. “Yeah, but like, in a hot way, right?”

Jayce only glowers at her in response.

“Your words, man, not mine!” Vi says, smirking as she flicks a piece of crust at him. “And let’s be real—you’re not just spiraling because you think he hates you. You want to impress him.”

Jayce goes quiet.

There it is—raw, unspoken—the truth dragged reluctantly into the light.

When Jayce finally speaks, his words come slowly, as if he’s weighing each one in his mind before he gives them a voice. “Viktor is brilliant. Scary smart. I don’t want to just coast through this… or somehow screw this up. I want to win with him. I want to make something great, something that actually matters. And maybe—I don’t know—prove that I’m more than just the shiny “golden boy” who he thinks got here on charm and privilege.”

His voice trembles at the edges, each word quieter than the last, as though even the air is reluctant to carry them.

Caitlyn’s gaze softens. She reaches across the space between them and squeezes his wrist, gentle and grounding. “Jayce. You do work hard—harder than most. People might not always see it, but we do. You’re not just some poster boy with a nice smile. You push yourself. You stay up until 3AM fine-tuning equations no one assigned. You care. That’s not arrogance. That’s excellence.”

“Yeah,” Vi adds, her voice surprisingly earnest. “I mean, half the time I don’t understand jackshit of what comes out of your mouth—no offense—but honestly? That just proves that you’re actually smart.”

Jayce blinks at them. He basks in their kindness, at the warmth they kindled in a space he’s been satiating with self-doubt.

Caitlyn smiles. “You don’t have to prove anything to us. But if you want to prove something to Viktor? Then do it. Show him what you’re capable of. The two of you together—there’s no way you don’t burn half the lab down and make something brilliant.”

Jayce lets out a breathless laugh, shoulders sagging as the tension drains from them. “You guys are the absolute worst. Why are you so nice to me?”

“Because we love watching your slow descent into academic madness,” Vi deadpans. “Frankly, it’s my main source of free entertainment.”

Jayce laughs again—brighter now, easier, more himself. But then the reality returns, and he slumps back into the couch with a fresh groan.

He exhales. “I don’t even know how to contact him. I don’t have his number, and talking to him in person is impossible without it spiraling into some tiring debate. He probably strictly communicates via email, during business days only, for all I know.”

“I don’t understand why you’re so worried about all this.” Vi says, digging her knuckles into his shoulder in a half-hearted massage. “You’re Jayce fucking Talis! The star of Piltover Academy! Where’s the confidence?”

“Relax.” Caitlyn says, “Try approaching him after class. No theatrics, full professional. Just ask to meet up and start planning. I’m sure he’ll cooperate.”

She glances towards Jayce, and something in his expression must have prompted her to say more, because she adds, “This is a prestigious competition after all, and Viktor’s reputation and name is also on the line. I hear there’s also his scholarship he needs to maintain.”

“Right,” Vi chimes in, voice playful now as she continues to knead his shoulders, “go talk to him. It shouldn’t be that hard.”

It’s hard.

Impossible, even.

Trying to catch Viktor in the chaos of a crowded hallway is akin to holding a ribbon of smoke with bare hands—elusive, stubborn, slipping through his fingers no matter how tightly Jayce closes his grasp.

Jayce rushes fast, dodging a tangle of second-years trickling into the late morning sun, trailing chatter and the hushed rustle of notebooks. The unforgiving summer heat presses down on everything, dense and stale, and Jayce’s palms are sweating as he weaves through the tide.

“Viktor!” He calls, voice bouncing too sharply against tile and plaster, echoing through the noise.

No response.

Ahead, Viktor only keeps walking, slender frame cutting a straight line through the crowd like blade. His coat sways with his steps, efficient and deliberate with every stride. The binder he cradles to his chest is stuffed to bursting—its sharp corners worn down by handling, its edges marked by ink and rough equations.

Jayce gasps and picks up his pace, irritation flaring with the heat in his cheeks. “Viktor! Can you just—please wait for a second?”

Viktor stops. But it’s not a pause that invites conversation. It’s a pause that feels like a slammed door. He turns towards Jayce with a slowness so mechanical it borders on mockery, his spine a line of tension, his expression carved from nonchalance.

“Yes?” Viktor asks, voice flat and inflectionless—polite in the way that feels like an insult.

Jayce flashes him a perfect smile, a fragile attempt to bring lightness into the otherwise terse space they share. “Hey. Just wanted to talk. About the competition.”

Viktor doesn’t blink. “We’re talking.”

The smile on Jayce’s face flickers, then steadies. He shifts his weight, gestures vaguely between them. “Right. Cool. Just—figured we should start planning? Maybe get on the same page?”

Viktor tilts his head a fraction. The fluorescent lights catch in his amber eyes, which now look more like molten brass than the usual honey Jayce adores. “Send me your initial thoughts.”

Jayce frowns, walking in step beside him again when Viktor starts moving, clearly dismissing the conversation.

“I could,” he says carefully, “but I don’t have any way to contact you. Like, at all. You’ve managed to avoid every group project and social platform known to man. Do you have a number?”

“No.”

Jayce blinks. “No, as in... you don’t have one or you’re not giving it to me?”

“No, as in I don’t give it to anyone.”

Jayce stares, incredulous. “Okay, so what do you do? Please don’t tell me you only communicate through the university email?”

“I don’t see a problem with the university email.”

“Of course,” Jayce mutters, exasperated. “Because nothing says collaboration like a formal correspondence with the emotional intimacy of a brick wall.”

Viktor exhales then, long and dragging, as if Jayce is giving him a migraine just by existing. Without looking, he reaches into his binder, scribbles something down on a sticky note, and slaps it flat against Jayce’s chest mid-stride. His fingers linger for only a second, perhaps two—just long enough to make Jayce think it’s personal.

The note flutters slightly in the breeze as Viktor walks away, his coat sweeping dramatically behind him like he routed an exit in advance.

Jayce reads the handwriting, scrawled and precise:

[email protected]

He calls after him. “You’re not seriously going to ghost me and expect me to email you like some kind of sad academic pen pal—”

But Viktor is already gone.

Jayce sits at his desk like a soldier at the brink of battle, cloaked not in armor, but in the dim wash of his laptop’s glow. The screen casts a pale, ghostly blue across his face, flickering like a distant storm waiting to break.

He spins once in his chair. Then again. A slow, thoughtful orbit, as if gathering momentum from the room itself. Finally, he plants both feet to the ground with a particular stubbornness and fixes his gaze on the blinking cursor. It blinks back—taunts him. It knows this is ridiculous.

But if Viktor wants formal, Jayce is going to go so formal. The challenge is on.

He cracks his neck. Rolls his shoulders. Places his hands on the keyboard like a man about to conduct an orchestra.

And then he begins to type.

Subject: Initial Collaborative Proposal – Annual Innovator’s Competition

Dear Mr. Viktor (Surname Unlisted),

I hope this message reaches you at a convenient time, and that your academic week has been both fruitful and unburdened by excess bureaucratic strain.

Following Professor Heimerdinger’s announcement regarding our joint selection as Piltover Academy’s representatives for the upcoming Innovator’s Competition, I wanted to promptly extend a hand of cooperation and outline a proposal for our collaborative structure.

Should your schedule allow, I believe it would be mutually beneficial to convene for a brief ideation session. My proposed agenda is as follows:

• Identification of key thematic pillars (scope, ambition, and potential for world-changing genius)
• Division of labor (as determined by personal strength, preference, and/or disdain)
• Shared calendar construction (to avoid scheduling conflicts, burnout, and/or blood feuds)

Please advise your availability. I am open on M/W/F post-lecture and weekends, excluding Tuesday mornings, during which I attend a mandatory Advanced Thermodynamics lecture and experience a small existential crisis.

Looking forward to your esteemed response.

With respect and anticipation,

Jayce Talis

Third-Year Student, Department of Engineering

Founding Member, Hextech Society

Accidental Overachiever | Known Offender of Fashionable Lab Safety Goggles

Jayce hits send, leans back in his chair, and exhales like he’s just signed a diplomatic treaty.

“This’ll show him,” he mutters to himself, then immediately doubts every single life choice that led to this email.

Because somewhere, far away, Viktor is probably reading it, frowning with the cold judgment of a man who considers emojis a war crime.

Jayce slaps a hand over his eyes. “I should’ve just asked for a pigeon.”

The email arrives just after midnight, its notification pulsing in the corner of Viktor’s screen with all the tact of a fire alarm. The blue light flickers against the stark white of his wallpaper, casting long shadows across his cluttered desk. He blinks once, slowly, the sender name catching his eye like a sliver of glass beneath the skin.

Jayce Talis.

Of course.

He hovers for a moment, cursor trembling ever so slightly—then clicks.

And immediately regrets it.

The subject line alone makes his eye twitch:

Initial Collaborative Proposal – Annual Innovator’s Competition

The entire email itself is a mockery. A litany of formal language, structured bullet points, and sentences so polite they practically bow at the waist. Viktor’s jaw tightens the longer he scrolls. The sheer nerve of Jayce to adopt this tone after three years of mocking lab safety procedures and showing up to class with the top buttons of his uniform unfixed. Who, just last week, suggested skipping their Advanced Thermodynamics lecture because “the stars felt off today.”

Viktor’s eyes narrow at the closing signature:

“Accidental Overachiever | Known Offender of Fashionable Lab Safety Goggles”

With the mechanical grace of someone holding back a primal scream, Viktor shuts his laptop. His hands curl into the desk for a beat longer than necessary. Then, he reaches for his phone and opens his messages.

He fires off a text to Mel:

(12:22 AM): He sent me a formal email.

(12:22 AM): I don’t know who I want to kill first: him or myself.

Three dots bubble on the screen. Then Mel, as always, replies back with her brand of dry amusement.

(12:24 AM): i almost spat my coffee

(12:24 AM): i can’t believe he actually went through with it

Viktor lets his head drop back against the chair. His right hand rises instinctively to rub at his temple, massaging slow circles in the spot just behind his brow where his headaches like to bloom. It’s always Jayce. Always Jayce Talis, as if the universe itself is staging an inside joke at the expense of Viktor’s crumbling sanity.

(12:25 AM): I’m going to murder him.

(12:25 AM): clearly he’s trying, viktor

(12:25 AM): maybe don’t commit murder just yet?

(12:25 AM): It had bullet points, Mel. Bullet. Points.

(12:25 AM): this is what happens when you act like a toddler with the emotional maturity of a teaspoon

He clicks his tongue. Mel’s sense of justice is irritatingly consistent—she believes in playing fair, in giving people a chance, in balancing the scale. But tonight, Viktor wants her to be petty with him. He wants her to say ‘You’re right, Viktor, Jayce should be arrested for crimes against email etiquette.’

(12:30 AM): I’m going to block him. I’ll tell Professor Heimerdinger I’m withdrawing.

(12:30 AM): I’ll say I’ve developed an allergic reaction to golden retrievers in human form.

(12:31 AM): that’s… oddly specific

When Viktor fails to reply immediately, Mel sends another text:

(12:33 AM): viktor, you’ve wanted to join this competition since forever

(12:33 AM): why are you acting so petty all of a sudden, you’re not usually like this

He stares at that message for a long time.

Around him, the silence of the room settles like fog—soft and suffocating. The dim light of his desk lamp pools across worn-out textbooks and mechanical sketches left half-finished. He sits in it, his thoughts coiling tightly under his ribs.

This competition has been his fiercest ambition since he was nineteen—just a freshman at the Academy, hungry and unproven. Viktor’s future hinges on it. His name, his worth, the weight of every sleepless night and every precisely calibrated system—everything has led to this. This was meant to be the moment he proves he belongs. Not just to the Academy.

To Piltover itself.

And now, Viktor is sharing it. With him.

His thumbs move slower now, the truth cracking its way out.

(12:40 AM): Because it’s him, Mel.

(12:40 AM): Jayce Talis.

(12:40 AM): Walking sunlight, effortless charm, golden boy the entire world bows for.

(12:41 AM): so you’re mad he’s good at things and people like him?

Her question is gentle. But it strikes the nerve raw.

(12:45 AM): I’m mad because he represents everything I’m not.

People hand Jayce everything Viktor bleeds for. Applause comes to him like gravity—natural, inevitable—while Viktor claws his way up from the dark, carving brilliance from bone just to be seen as equal.

His hands falter. A tension long welded into his spine fractures, just slightly.

It’s not hatred that curdles in his chest, but weight—grief shaped like envy, heavy as lead. A slow, sinking dread that no matter how many sleepless nights he pours into invention, no matter how ruthlessly he scours himself into something sharp and clever and irreplaceable—he will always be an echo in Jayce’s light.

Never enough. Not next to someone like him.

A pause.

Then:

(12:47 AM): but this isn’t about beating him, it’s about working with him

(12:47 AM): maybe that is the real challenge, viktor

(12:47 AM): not just building something great, but building it with him

The silence that follows stretches long and full. Viktor’s reflection stares at him from the blank screen of his phone, jaw tight, eyes shadowed.

And slowly, something gives.

(12:48 AM): I hate when you sound like my conscience.

(12:48 AM): that’s because I am

(12:48 AM): now, go write that boy back

(12:48 AM): you’ve made him suffer enough

After three full days of silence—three agonizing days where Jayce spiraled at least seventeen times about the overly formal email he sent and wondered if he accidentally committed some kind of scholarly war crime—his phone rattles him awake at three in the morning.

It’s a number he doesn’t recognize.

The message is simple.

(03:56 AM): Hello, golden boy.

Jayce squints, heart lurching with the sudden, absurd clarity that only comes at ungodly hours. He blinks at the screen once, twice. The corners of his mouth twitch. The nickname is sharp, unmistakable.

There's only one person who would use it like that—like a scalpel laced with dry irony and salt.

He types back, brow raised.

(03:56 AM): viktor?

(03:56 AM): Excellent deductive reasoning. No wonder you’re Piltover’s brightest.

Jayce huffs a sleepy laugh, rolling onto his back and sinking into the warm sprawl of tangled sheets. He can almost hear Viktor’s voice in that message—velvety and tired and steeped in disdain.

(03:57 AM): wow, three whole days and you finally emerge from your cocoon

(03:57 AM): what, did my prim and proper email emotionally wound you?

(03:57 AM): You think too highly of yourself.

(03:57 AM): Someone ought to drag you down from your throne.

(03:57 AM): so you admit I’m king?

Jayce winces at his joke and scrambles for a new message to write:

(03:58 AM): admit it, you were impressed with my email

(03:58 AM): Eh, I’ve seen more structure in non-peer-reviewed articles.

He grins in the dark, shaking his head. Somehow, even through text, Viktor can drip sarcasm like venom. But curiosity gets the better of him.

(03:58 AM): wait, how did you get my number

(03:58 AM): I asked Professor Heimerdinger.

Jayce lets out a groan loud enough to startle the silence. He throws an arm over his eyes and pictures it now—Viktor, grim-faced and reluctant, interrupting Heimerdinger in the middle of calibrating something deeply urgent just to ask for his number. The mental image is so ridiculous—so painfully, perfectly Viktor—that it almost endears him. Almost.

(03:58 AM): you asked heimerdinger??? what, did you also file a formal request in triplicate?

(03:59 AM): He seemed delighted. Said “communication is key to innovation” and gave me your contact with the energy of someone paneling a research defense.

(03:59 AM): wow. great. amazing.

Jayce watches as the typing bubble appear. Then vanish. Then appear again—flickering like a nervous heartbeat.

(04:00 AM): I suppose I should thank you. The email was thorough. Irritatingly so.

(04:00 AM): is this your way of saying you actually want to work together?

(04:00 AM): This is my way of saying I’ve accepted my fate.

(04:00 AM): so dramatic

(04:00 AM): im honored to be your reluctant lab partner

(04:01 AM): “Honored” is a strong word. You should be terrified. I have very, very high standards.

Jayce snorts, knocking his ankle against the bedframe as he shifts restlessly. His room is still and quiet, filled only with the glow of his phone screen and the hum of something else—something shifting. Something soft and strange.

It’s stupid. It’s barely anything.

But it feels like something—something unraveling, loosening.

The tension of three years. Slowly, softly easing.

(04:02 AM): alright, v. wanna meet up in the lab this week to plan?

(04:02 AM): Saturday. 10AM. Not a minute later.

(04:02 AM): 10 it is. hope you’re ready to be dazzled

(04:02 AM): If you manage to prepare the complete list of materials I’ll send you tomorrow, I’ll consider being civil.

(04:03 AM): deal

(04:03 AM): it’s a date

There’s a pause. One that stretches too long.

 For a second, Jayce wonders if he’s pushed it too far.

Then, finally, the typing bubble flickers to life again:

(04:07 AM): If you’re late, I’m going to dissolve you in acids and pour all your remains in Erlenmeyer flasks.

Jayce stares at the message. His thumb hovers over the keyboard, but he doesn’t type anything.

Instead, he lowers the phone slowly into his lap and tilts his head back until it knocks against the headboard. His gaze drifts to the ceiling, where the faint reflection of streetlights flickers in lazy gold bands across the plaster.

“…Jesus Christ,” he mutters, the words a whispered exhale between disbelief and reluctant awe.

Jayce laughs. Soft at first, just a huff of breath through his nose—but it builds. Until it becomes a full-bodied chuckle that curls into the quiet and refuses to leave. He’s horrified. He’s delighted. He’s weirdly, insanely charmed.

Maybe it’s the late hour. Maybe it’s the fact that Viktor finally replied after three full days of silence. Or maybe it’s just that there was something in that final message—something dry and venom-laced and so undeniably Viktor—that made Jayce feel like this wasn’t going to be the disaster he braced for.

Like maybe—just maybe—working with Viktor wouldn’t kill him.

Or, if it did, it’d be one hell of a way to go.

Chapter Text

The physics lab beneath the morning light is sleek and quietly bristling with restrained potential. It smells faintly of disinfectant and ozone, undercut by that distinct mineral sharpness of cold metal that reminds Jayce of places built for ideas more than people. On the far wall, the whiteboards are blank, but not empty. They wait like a held breath, ready to bloom with equations, theories, the shape of something not yet real.

Jayce is the first to arrive.

He shoulders the door open with more flourish than necessary, the sound of his polished shoes soft but certain against the tile. There’s a thread of mint in his breath and the expensive trace of cologne that doesn’t quite suit the lab, but suits him—brash, prematurely confident, and trying not to show it.

His bag lands on one of the chairs with a soft thunk, and without wasting time, he crosses the room to the tall storage cabinets in the corner. He’s working through the list Viktor sent the night before: graphite rods, insulated wire coils, a short-range emitter module, precision calipers, and three types of solder alloy Jayce had to Google twice.

Jayce collects each item with careful hands, setting them in a precise, almost reverent row across the workbench. There are no muttered jokes this time. No idle humming. He even double-checks the labels, which might be a first.

Ten minutes pass. Then, at precisely 10:00 AM, the door clicks open with mechanical precision.

Viktor enters like a storm dragged in by the wind.

Rain clings to him in streaks, darkening the shoulders of his coat like bruises. His scarf—charcoal gray and frayed at the seams—winds twice around his neck, less for warmth than for defense, a barrier between skin and world. A few curls of damp hair cling to his temple, pushed loose by the wind’s unkind fingers.

Jayce’s left hand twitches, then. An involuntary stutter of muscle, as if pulled by some quiet gravity towards Viktor, as if his body remembers before his mind does: to move, to reach.

Viktor pauses in the doorway. His gaze sweeps the lab before it lands on Jayce.

Jayce, as if on instinct, straightens his spine. His face lights up with a grin he does not bother suppressing. “Morning, sunshine.”

Viktor does not dignify him with a response. He strides towards the central table, movements crisp and deliberate, and drops his bag beside a nearby stool. Out comes a thick binder, a laptop covered in cracked, half-peeled stickers, and a dented black tumbler that lands against the table like punctuation.

Jayce watches this display of quiet precision, then reaches into his bag and tosses something gently across the room.

Viktor catches it mid-air without looking.

It’s a sandwich wrapped in wax paper. Neatly folded, like someone took time with it.

“I figured you might be hungry,” Jayce says, attempting a casual tone that almost works.

The sandwich is homemade, but Viktor does not need to know that. Viktor also doesn’t need to know that Jayce made it earlier this morning, still half-lost in sleep, standing in the kitchen with mussed hair and mismatched socks, assembling it like a half-formed dream he wasn’t ready to name. Jayce wasn’t sure exactly why, only that he remembered Viktor never seems to eat lunch. And in the rare times he does, he always eats something pre-packaged and shrink-wrapped from a vending machine, consumed like obligation rather than sustenance.

Jayce doesn’t know what Viktor liked, or if he had any preferences at all, so he settled with the safest options he could think of: thin-sliced ham, one crisp leaf of lettuce, a slice of tomato, and just enough cheese. Nothing fancy. Balanced, simple, the way he imagined Viktor might approve of things.

“Are you bribing me with food? ”Viktor looks at the sandwich with eyes brimming of suspicion.

Jayce shrugs, his grin lopsided. “I’ve heard it works on cats and feral academics.”

Viktor narrows his eyes, all sharp cheekbones and burnished gold glare. “I assure you, I bite harder.”

“Mind if we put that to the test?” Jayce teases.

Viktor doesn’t reply. Just a pointed shift as he turns away, opening his folder with a particular kind of grim reverence.

“We begin with timelines, task division, and literature review.” Viktor says, tone clipped. “I've highlighted several key sources and outlined a tentative proposal on page three. Please review it before speaking.”

Jayce tilts his head. “How about we begin with coffee?”

“I don’t require caffeine,” Viktor replies without looking up. “I require silence.”

Jayce beams. “Then you’re really not going to like me.”

Viktor lets out a breath—not loud, but unmistakably pained, like someone enduring an itch they’ve sworn not to scratch. It slips between clenched teeth, long and weary.

Still, despite himself, he unwraps the sandwich and takes a small, almost reluctant bite.

Three hours in, and by some miracle known only to the gods of innovation and sheer stubbornness, Jayce and Viktor are still alive. No yelling, no storming out, no wiping the whiteboard clean in frustrated rage. Just two brilliant minds burning hot, locked in orbit around a shared goal.

The whiteboard is now half-covered in scribbles: schematics, timelines, and the occasional desperate question marks. Notes scatter across the worktable like fallen leaves. Viktor’s laptop hums softly between them, screen lit with overlapping research papers and blueprint mockups. It falters once, then steadies—like it, too, is trying to keep up.

They’ve gone back and forth on at least five ideas, three of which Jayce shot down for being convoluted, and two that Viktor shredded with clinical savagery for being, in his words, “scientifically offensive”.

Now, Viktor paces.

He does that when his mind is in motion—tight, relentless, like a pressure valve ready to snap. There is no rest in his steps, only purpose, chased by a thought he is yet to catch. His fingers tremble as if reaching for something invisible.

“I want to make something real,” he confesses at last. “Something that actually helps. Not another frivolous tech marvel with zero application outside the walls of this campus.”

Jayce, who had been idly spinning a pen between his fingers, pauses. His eyes lift to meet Viktor’s.

“You’ve got something in mind?” He asks. The open sincerity in his voice startles even him.

Viktor doesn’t speak at first. He only lingers in his silence, his presence flickering at the edges, as if he is only half-present—one foot in the moment, the rest of him drifting somewhere unreachable, far from Jayce.

“I was a sickly child,” Viktor begins, voice quieter now. “Lung condition. Congenital. Rare.”

Jayce draws in a breath, surprised at Viktor’s sudden admission. Viktor is always guarded—never offered so much as a fragment of his life, let alone his childhood in the Undercity. But now, something is beginning to fracture. Jayce glimpses the traces of a silence slowly cracking.

“Every breath hurt, like swallowing glass. And in the Undercity…” Viktor pauses, the words splintering from the walls of his throat. “The air was thick with smoke and metal and rot. I spent most of my days in collapsing hospitals and clinics—only if I was lucky, only in the rare chances my family could afford them. The rest of the time, I waited. For the next cough. For the next time I could not stand. For all of it to end.”

Viktor’s hand finds the edge of the table, fingers curling—not in anger, but to anchor himself against a past that keeps dragging him under.

“There were no diagnostics. No real treatment. Just rusting machines and kind words from people too poor to dream of healing.” Viktor’s lips stretches into a semblance of a smile. There is no joy in it. Just a particular kind of melancholy sewn too deep in his bones, like a memory worn and heavy. “But somehow, I got better. I still don’t know why. Maybe luck. Maybe cruelty.” A beat, as if the air itself leans to listen. “Or maybe it was just unfinished work.”

Jayce is silent. The expression he carries in his face is not pity—he knows better than to offer Viktor that—but something gentler. Respect, perhaps. Recognition.

Viktor’s gaze sharpens, returning from wherever it had drifted. “That’s why I build,” he says simply. “Because I lived. And too many others don’t.”

“I want to build something affordable. Something smart. Something that doesn’t cost a childhood.” Viktor continues, not quite looking at Jayce. “A portable diagnostic interface. Wearable. Lightweight. Something that scans vitals, identifies early abnormalities, sends alerts. Prevents before the damage is irreversible.”

Jayce exhales, slow and steady. Then he nods.

“Your idea’s not just good, Viktor,” he says. “It’s important. It’s the kind of idea that matters.”

Viktor clears his throat, suddenly wary of his own vulnerability. “It’s ambitious.”

“Good. We’re allowed to be ambitious.”

In an attempt to lighten the mood, Jayce reaches for a light-hearted joke. “I mean, have you seen my hair?”

Viktor looks at him with exhausted eyes. “I’m trying to share a vision of humanitarian innovation, and you bring up your hair?”

“Oh, my hair’s very ambitious,” Jayce says in mock solemnity. “The product of years of engineering, really.”

“God,” Viktor mutters, but his lips are heavy with the ghost of a chuckle. “Why do you even speak?”

Jayce laughs, buoyed by the warmth in Viktor’s expression. He grabs a marker and stands, dragging it across the whiteboard in broad strokes. Circular nodes branching from a central line, each labeled with a function: pulse, oxygen, neurological relay.

“Okay,” he says, swiftly gearing back into focus. “Imagine this: a modular sensor system, calibrated for pulse oximetry, cardiac rhythms, and neural feedback. Something powered with a micro-hex core. Small enough for the wrist, but strong enough to run diagnostics. We can make it energy-efficient, too, and have it locally processed. Data encrypted then pinged to nearby relay hubs—medical stations, mobile responders, even personal devices.”

He draws faster, momentum catching fire. Labeled arrows sprout across the whiteboard—‘O₂ saturation,’ ‘ECG,’ ‘neurostim loop,’ ‘latency buffer’. A framework begins to form, no longer abstract.

And Viktor watches Jayce—really watches him, for the first time, since they first met at nineteen—with something so tenderly close to awe. Only genuine, startled respect.

Because it’s easy to forget, at times, that beneath Jayce’s bravado and terrible jokes, lies pure, unfiltered brilliance. A boy who is sharper than he lets on—always thinking, always building. And this sketch on the board isn’t mere decoration, it’s invention gradually taking form.

“I like this,” Jayce says. “It’s meaningful—important to you. And we can do it. With your code and my hardware experience? We’ll make it work.”

Viktor is quiet for a moment. Then he steps forward, picks up a marker, and begins refining the sketch.

Their shoulders brush once, brief and warm.

Jayce does not move away.

“You really think we can pull this off?” Viktor asks. And it’s rare, the tremor in his voice—like the echo of too many nights asking the same question into silence.

Jayce nudges him gently with an elbow. “With your brain and my biceps? We’re practically unstoppable.”

Viktor gives him a flat look. “You’ll lift the soldering kit while I finish coding the neural interface.”

“Exactly,” Jayce winks. “See? Division of labor.”

For a heartbeat, Viktor lets the tension drop from his shoulders. Lets the hope edge in—tentative, trembling.

Lets himself believe.

And then, like a shadow catching the light, a smile flickers across his lips. Fragile as breath, but real all the same.

Jayce’s phone buzzes just as he flops onto his bed, the spring groaning beneath him in protest. His arms ache from three hours of hovering over circuit boards and sketching layouts, but there’s something in the tiredness that feels good. It feels earned.

The group chat with Vi and Caitlyn lights up, a notification bouncing at the top of his screen.

Vi (10:43 PM): soooo jayce

Vi (10:43 PM): how was ur date with mr. doom and gloom

Jayce smirks, despite himself. He rubs a towel to his hair still damp from a brisk shower, rivulets still clinging to the nape of his neck, collar dampening the back of his shirt.

Jayce (10:43 PM): went great

Jayce (10:43 PM): wedding’s in three months

Jayce (10:43 PM): you bringing the cake or the weapons?

The typing bubble pops up almost instantly.

Caitlyn (10:44 PM): We’ll bring both

Caitlyn (10:44 PM): You know, just in case he tries to run

Jayce (10:44 PM): listen, once I undoom him from the narrative, the marriage is back on

Caitlyn (10:45 PM): What does that even mean?

Vi (10:45 PM): what a fucking SIMP

Vi (10:45 PM): jayce talis, golden boy, rank 1 engineering student, hextech org president, caught simping in 4k

Vi (10:45 PM): i hope ur fanbase knows what ur type is in men because god i feel bad for them holy shit

Vi (10:45 PM): theyre over there doing god knows what to get ur attention and ur head over heels with mr. doom and gloom i cannot lmaooo

Jayce breaks into laughter—loud, unguarded, the kind that scrapes out of his chest and leaves him breathless. He flops back, one arm flung over his eyes, grinning like a fool.

Then he lifts the phone again and changes the subject.

Jayce (10:47 PM): i may or may not have made him a sandwich

Caitlyn (10:47 PM): You made him a sandwich?

Vi (10:47 PM): bruh u packed him lunch??? that’s domestic as shit

Vi (10:47 PM): ur gone jayce, he owns ur soul now

Caitlyn (10:48 PM): @Jayce you didn’t even pack me a sandwich when I got shot last semester

Jayce (10:48 PM): you said hospital food builds character

He sits up slowly, elbow resting on one knee, phone cradled in his hand. His smile fades—just a little—as he thinks back to Viktor’s voice earlier. Raw, but determined. The kind of certainty that grows from pain, not pride.

He types slower now.

Jayce (10:50 PM): no, but seriously, viktor thought of something

Jayce (10:50 PM): an invention that actually matters

Jayce (10:50 PM): a wearable diagnostic that detects disease early for the undercity

Jayce (10:50 PM): for kids who don’t get help until it’s too late

There’s a pause. Then:

Caitlyn (10:50 PM): That’s really incredible, Jayce

Vi (10:51 PM): as someone from zaun, that’s big

Vi (10:51 PM): wow, thank you, i hope u two manage to build that

Jayce (10:51 PM): i want to help make it real

Jayce (10:51 PM): whatever it takes

He stares at the screen for a second longer, heart beating slow and sure.

This is not just about his stupid admiration towards Viktor anymore. Not even about winning the prestigious competition.

It’s about making sure Viktor’s voice—the one that lived through what their invention could stop—gets heard in every line of code, every circuit Jayce will build with his hands.

Caitlyn (10:52 PM): Did you impress him though? That’s the real question

Vi (10:52 PM): yeah, did he look at u like u were his second favorite sandwich???

Jayce (10:52 PM): oh, absolutely

Jayce (10:52 PM): had him smiling at least twice

Jayce (10:52 PM): thrice, actually, if we count the barely present one

Vi (10:52 PM): bro actually counted

Jayce (10:52 PM): of course i did

Jayce (10:52 PM): viktor’s made of marble, that half-smile was a miracle

He grins again, softer now. Jayce doesn't know how this project will go, or how long Viktor will allow him to stay close. But for once, the distance that separates them does not feel insurmountable.

This is merely the beginning. The blueprints are still ink on paper, and their future is still waiting to be forged.

The lecture on Advanced Electromagnetism ends. Students rise in a slow wave, gathering their things with murmured conversations and the biting scrape of chairs.

Viktor is slow to rise, not out of fatigue, but habit. He likes to wait until the room empties a little. Likes the quiet when the chaos drains out, leaving only the raw trail of thought behind. He adjusts his coat, tucks a battered notebook under his arm, and slips a pencil behind one ear.

Then he hears it. The confident rhythm of shoes against tile. That painstaking, familiar cadence.

He doesn’t have to look up to know.

“Hey,” Jayce says, too bright for someone who just spent two hours ignoring the laws of Maxwell’s equations. “You heading out?”

Viktor blinks. He glances up. Jayce Talis stands a little too close to him, shirt sleeves rolled to the elbow, hair tousled like he fought a wind tunnel and lost beautifully. A tender shaft of the afternoon sun cuts across his face through the window.

There’s a kind of brightness to Jayce that grates on Viktor—radiant in a way that sinks beneath his skin and settles like a quiet, simmering ache. A sunlit ease that feels dangerous. Like something that might burn Viktor’s hands if he ever dared so much as to reach for it.

Viktor adjusts the strap of his satchel. “I was planning to,” he says dryly.

Jayce chuckles. “Figured I’d catch you before you disappear back into the ether. Thought we could talk for a sec.”

Viktor hesitates. The word “no” flits across his mind like moth to a flame. But Jayce is already leaning against the desk beside him, too tall and too easy, and some exhausted part of Viktor can’t summon the strength to fight it.

“Fine,” he sighs.

They speak in low voices—something about timelines, material requests, a scheduling conflict Viktor had anticipated and already worked around. Jayce’s sentences loop in slow, confident arcs. He gestures as he talks, his hands animated like he’s building the words mid-air.

And then—Viktor notices.

A pair of students near the back of the room are watching them. One leans in to whisper something to the other, then laughs, glancing between Jayce and Viktor like they’ve just stumbled onto a particularly juicy contradiction.

Viktor stiffens.

His mind follows the thread of thought like a wire pulled too tight: What do they see?

Jayce, warm and golden, the Academy’s wonder boy with his gleaming future practically stitched to his shoulders. And him—a bleak enigma from the Undercity, shrouded in old coats and unearned suspicion, always standing a little too far from the sun.

They must look ridiculous together.

“I can adjust our lab time if Saturday’s still inconvenient,” Viktor says, redirecting the moment with cold precision.

Jayce just waves him off. “No, Saturday’s good. Let’s meet in the morning again, same as before. Actually, do you want to meet more often?”

“What?”

“More often—I mean, I’m sure we’ll need more time as we start to build and polish. You might want to meet weekdays, too. Can’t afford to miss me too much, you know?” Jayce tries to play it off with a shrug and a grin, but it lands sideways—too fast, too hopeful. The joke flounders, unable to hide the sincerity behind it.

Viktor swallows an existential scream clawing out of his throat. “I juggle two jobs outside of classes. Time isn’t something I can afford at the moment.”

Something in Jayce’s expression shifts enough for Viktor to glimpse. His grin dims at the edges, a flicker of understanding slipping through. “I see. I respect that, just let me know what works for you. And Viktor—” He snaps his fingers, as if remembering something vital. “One more thing.”

Viktor raises a brow. “Yes?”

Jayce grins. “Ham or chicken?”

“What?”

“Ham or chicken?” Jayce repeats, as if mere repetition clarifies anything.

Viktor stares at him, completely nonplussed. “...Chicken, I suppose?”

Jayce’s grin widens, that signature spark lighting his face like it always does when he’s pleased with himself. “Noted.”

And just like that, he gathers his things and starts towards the exit, humming something under his breath that is lost to Viktor’s ears.

Viktor only remains where he is, watching as the door swings shut behind Jayce.

Chapter Text

Viktor enters the lab at precisely ten in the morning. The door clicks shut behind him with a soft, practiced ease, a sound swallowed by the quiet hum of idle machines and the faint scent of solder still lingering in the air.

The room appears empty at first glance. Jayce is nowhere in sight—but Viktor’s eyes land almost immediately on the leather messenger bag slumped at the far corner of the worktable, straps undone like it had been dropped in a hurry.

His gaze shifts upward the whiteboard, where a message is scrawled across the top margin in Jayce’s rough, barely legible handwriting—half block letters, half an impatient cursive, with a trailing underline that resembles a comet tail. It reads:

‘Running by Heimerdinger’s office to fetch some materials real quick! BRB! — Golden Boy’

Viktor huffs a quiet breath through his nose. Golden Boy. He shakes his head, but the smirk that tugs at the edge of his mouth is undeniable. Infuriating, that nickname; except it has gradually grown on him now, as strange as it is, like lichen on old stone. Stubborn, oddly endearing.

Then he sees it.

On the chair where Viktor usually sits, rests a sandwich. Wax paper folded with meticulous care, the corners pressed down like creases in origami. No note, no explanation. No flourish of a signature or a cheeky add-on scribbled across the wrapper.

But Viktor doesn’t need one to know.

He crosses the room slowly, each step softened by thought. His hand wraps around the sandwich and examines it. A breath slips from him—quiet, unthinking, barely more than the sound of stillness shifting. But something changes in his expression. Something tender, flickering, private. It lingers longer than he’ll admit.

When Viktor unwraps the paper to eat the sandwich, he does with such softness, as though the moment requires gentleness.

He sees chicken.

Viktor blinks once, lips quirking with the vague memory of the ridiculous question Jayce had thrown him a couple of days ago. ‘Ham or chicken?’ That grin on Jayce’s face when Viktor mumbled ‘Chicken, I suppose’ like it had been a private secret.

And now this.

No fanfare. No teasing. Just something quietly left behind. Something considered.

Something remembered.

The door creaks open twelve minutes later with the same carelessness as always—hinges protesting under the weight of Jayce’s arrival. He strides in balancing a stack of materials precariously against his chest: a box of copper coils, a case of microtools, and what looks suspiciously like a bottle of iced coffee wedged between his chin and shoulder.

“Delivery for one undercaffeinated genius,” Jayce says without missing a beat, kicking the door shut with the heel of his shoe. The materials rattle ominously.

Viktor doesn’t look up from where he’s seated, quietly reviewing notes from their initial brainstorming. His pencil hovers in the air mid-annotation. “Heimerdinger sent you back with refreshments now?”

“No,” Jayce replies, setting the stack down with a grunt. “This was self-motivated. I figured one of us should have caffeine in their system, and it certainly wasn’t going to be you, tea snob.”

“What?”

“Wait—actually, do you even like tea?” Jayce asks, already arranging the tools atop the central table. “I don’t even know and just assumed.”

Viktor slides his notes back into a folder and finally glances at him. “Tea is by far the superior beverage. Coffee is a scam perpetuated by capitalists with burnt taste buds.”

Jayce takes a long, dramatic sip of his iced coffee, then spreads his arms in mock reverence. “Spoken like a man who’s never known the joy of a proper iced latte. Tragic, really.”

Viktor hums, noncommittal, already opening his laptop.

Jayce meanders around the lab like usual, trailing fingers over benchtops and circuit trays with the attention span of a two year-old. Yet noticeably, he refuses to glance at Viktor’s workstation. Doesn’t acknowledge the empty sandwich wrapper now folded neatly beside his laptop. Doesn’t even let his eyes linger near the chair where he’d left it.

It’s intentional. Subtle, but Viktor notices.

Jayce, for all his flair and noise, says nothing about the sandwich.

And that silence, Viktor thinks, might be the most telling part of all. He watches Jayce from the corner of his eye, bemused by the deliberate avoidance.

With a rustle of foil and wires, Jayce drops a pack of copper conductors onto the central table and claps his hands once, theatrically. “Alright, what’s the plan today, V? Now that I’ve had my coffee, I’m fully stocked, mostly alert, and debatably brilliant.”

Viktor opens his notebook with all the patience of a man used to this exact degree of chaos. “We recalibrate the sensor nodes, update the signal parser, and begin testing cross-compatibility with the diagnostic shell. That is, if you can remain ‘mostly alert’ long enough to not short-circuit something again.”

Jayce gasps, hand to heart. “That happened once, Viktor. Once, last week. And the lights barely flickered.”

“You vaporized a resistor, Jayce. It screamed.”

“That was a dramatic resistor. I freed it from its mortal coil.”

Viktor levels him with a withering stare, utterly unimpressed. “If you ever utter that joke again, I will reassign you to cable organization duty. Permanently.”

Jayce salutes with mock solemnity. “Copy that, mister.”

They set to work.

Jayce manages the wiring with steady hands while Viktor adjusts the readings on the display interface. Their conversations slip between bickering and collaboration like gears clicking into place—unpolished, kinetic. They argue over waveforms, insult each other’s graphing techniques, and occasionally fall into pockets of silence so comfortable it does not need acknowledgment.

At one point, Jayce mutters under his breath, “If this doesn’t work, I swear I’m going to eat my screwdriver.”

“It would be the most nutritious thing you’ve consumed today,”

Jayce snorts. “This is a slander against the sandwich I made for breakfast. I’ll have you know it was lovingly made.”

Viktor notices the slip about the sandwich and decides to use it against Jayce. “Lovingly, was it?”

Jayce pauses mid-reach for the voltmeter. He settles for a shrug instead, eyes brightening with something Viktor struggles to fathom. “Hard to say. I don’t like to talk about my feelings in the lab. Bad for morale.”

Viktor says nothing. But behind his usual impassivity, something flickers—quick and elusive. Not quite fondness. Not yet. Just a shift. A momentary tilt towards something quiet and fragile and absolutely maddening.

The afternoon wears on. They test, rebuild, document. Viktor talks through adjustments while Jayce scrawls notes on the whiteboard in messy, looping script. They debate coil alignment. They argue about thermal thresholds. Jayce manages to blow a fuse. Viktor sighs, rises, and fixes it without even commenting—just a long-suffering look that Jayce responds to with a grin and a sheepish thumbs-up.

And somewhere between the data logs and the burned-out wire, something begins to take shape.

The invention—still unnamed, still a little crude—is no longer theoretical. It’s real. A heartbeat made of circuitry. Still rough, still early. But breathing, nonetheless.

The weeks begin to bleed.

Days blur into each other until time no longer passes in clean, separable lines but in gradients—shifting hues of morning light through the lab’s windows, the soft hum of equipment, the quiet scrape of pencil against blueprint. The lab becomes a second skin. Less a room, more a gravitational pull that tugs Jayce and Viktor back, again and again, as if the space itself remembers them.

They meet more frequently now. Two, sometimes three times a week—depending on Viktor’s schedule, which remains elusive and irregular. Jayce asked about it once, off-tangent, as they waited for a script to finish compiling.

“You mentioned you juggle two jobs outside of class,” Jayce begins, fidgeting with a hexagonal nut with the air of someone pretending to be nonchalant. “Mind telling me about them?”

Viktor’s eyes trace the mechanical movement of numbers in his laptop. “I tutor a few first-years for extra cash,” he says simply. “And I work part-time as Professor Heimerdinger’s research assistant. Part of the terms of my scholarship.”

Jayce stills at how easy the answer was wrung out of Viktor, worn and familiar like a weight he no longer notices. It hits Jayce then, with the force of something obvious he’s never truly seen: just how staggering Viktor’s day-to-day life must be. A third year engineering student balancing a full course load, two jobs, and still managing to show up, every day—not just present, but consistently brilliant. Someone who manages to score only a point or two lower than Jayce in exams, who ranks second against the entire department. All of this, while also inventing a device for one of the most prestigious engineering competitions in the region.

Jayce has always thought he worked hard. But standing there, listening, he realizes how much of his success had been cushioned by privilege—by time, money, the freedom to focus. Viktor has none of it. Yet somehow, he keeps pace. Surpassed him, even, if Jayce were being honest. In his head, there is no doubt: Viktor is more than the student he is.

Since then, Jayce hasn’t asked again. But he notices more—the weight Viktor carries in the slump of his shoulders, the bruised half-moons under his eyes, the brutal efficiency with which he portions out his time. Quietly, and without ever speaking it aloud, Jayce begins arriving earlier for their meetings, if only to prepare the workstations, to set things in order before Viktor appears. He stays later, too—lingering past than he normally would, trying to match Viktor’s quiet, unyielding pace in the only way he knows how.

And every session, without fail, a sandwich waits at Viktor’s seat—always wrapped in the same wax paper, the corners folded with meticulous care. At first, it was just the sandwich. Then came the tea. The same battered thermos each time, still warm to the touch, filled with some herbal concoction Viktor suspects Jayce is experimenting with.

Viktor never comments.

The first brew had been... questionable. Clearly the work of someone unfamiliar with the subtleties of tea. But over time, the taste began to change—less bitter, more balanced. Viktor imagines Jayce in his dorm kitchen, frowning over steeping times, adjusting leaves and temperatures in quiet trial and error. He’s almost certain Jayce watches his expression with every sip, trying to read the verdict in the arch of a brow or the press of his lips.

So Viktor helps him, in the only way he knows how—by being just a little more deliberate with his reactions. A softened blink for something pleasant. A wrinkle of his nose for anything too strong. It becomes a silent conversation between them, played out in steam and subtle glances.

And then, one day, Viktor takes a sip and pauses.

The tea is perfect. Steeped exactly to his preference—just the right warmth, the right earthy undertone, the faintest note of something floral at the end.

He stares at the thermos for a long, thoughtful moment.

Says nothing.

Then takes another sip.

And maybe he imagined it, but Viktor swears, just as the thermos lowers from his lips, he catches the ghost of a smile flickering across Jayce’s face. Not the kind he wears in crowds, all brightness and ease, but something quieter. Fragile. Rare. The kind Jayce keeps tucked away, like something sacred.

The device they’re building grows between them like a living thing—sinewed from trial and failure, refined by every mistake that leads to breakthrough. It shifts shape with each blueprint iteration, every soldered joint and recalibrated node. Their working prototype, once a scattered idea drawn in looping whiteboard ink, now pulses softly on the workbench like it’s breathing.

Heimerdinger checks in from time to time, barely able to see over the lip of the table.

“You’ve gone from hypothesis to reality faster than most of my research assistants,” he remarks one morning, peering at the newest diagnostic shell through two pairs of stacked glasses. “And you’ve done it without setting anything on fire. Remarkable.”

Jayce grins. Viktor wears the perfect mask of nonchalance.

Later, when Jayce’s back is turned, Viktor quietly recalls and basks in his professor’s positive feedback. Twice.

They test modules. They fail. Rebuild. Debug. Laugh. Argue.

Jayce hums when he’s focused, a quiet tune under his breath as his fingers tap out a rhythm on the edge of the table. It drives Viktor mad, but also strangely manages to center him. A beat he begins to associate with momentum, with the work moving forward. With company.

Viktor notices other things, too.

The way Jayce always takes the stool closest to him now. The way his sentences drift, losing their edge, when he’s circling something personal he can’t quite bring himself to say. The way he watches Viktor sometimes—not with idle curiosity, but with quiet intent. Like he’s committing to memory the shape of him in stillness. The way he exists when no one else is watching but him.

Jayce doesn’t like leaving projects unfinished, Viktor learns. Jayce also doesn’t like coffee when it’s too sweet, or the stains blue ink leaves on his uniform. He doesn’t like asking for help, or when his hair refuses to sit right in the morning—but he never says that part aloud.

But Jayce likes sunlight through the lab windows, and sandwiches with too much mustard. He likes the weight of a wrench in his hand and the scent of soldering metal. He likes laughter between calculations, and humming along to old songs he doesn’t quite remember the lyrics to. And most especially, Jayce likes building things with his hands; this, Viktor realizes with so much clarity, how Jayce wholly dedicates himself to shaping potential into something real, something that matters.

One particular starless night, Jayce leans back on his stool, all easy limbs and lazy satisfaction, and says, “You know, we’re kind of good at this.”

There is something tender in the way Jayce spoke the words, his voice softened by hours of quiet work.

Viktor doesn’t look up. “Speak for yourself.”

Jayce elbows him gently. “Admit it. We make a good team.”

“You’re chaos incarnate,” Viktor mutters. “I am a system of refined logic. Our partnership is a statistical aberration.”

But he doesn’t say no.

And Jayce doesn’t stop smiling.

Sometimes, Viktor stays behind after Jayce leaves. He’ll linger in the soft hum of the lab alone, fingers brushing the edge of the device like it might disappear without proof of touch. He watches the steady glow of the interface they built from nothing—built from memory, from intention. A whisper of mercy forged into circuitry.

He places a hand on the table’s edge, grounding himself.

He never thought he’d get this far.

He never thought anyone would walk into his orbit and stay.

And yet—here he is.

And so is Jayce.

Viktor closes his eyes and listens. To the silence. To the hum. As if the room is breathing with him.

Viktor knows something is wrong the moment he steps into the lab and glances at his seat.

No sandwich. No tea.

It shouldn’t matter. It’s absurd that it does. And yet his eyes linger on the vacant stretch of desk where the sandwich always waits, wrapped in wax paper with neat, folded corners. The absence presses into his chest—not sharp, but persistent. A dull tug of something ridiculous and unspoken. He tells himself it’s irritation.

A few minutes later, the door swings open with too much force, the metal frame rattling in its hinges. Jayce enters like a storm barely held together—eyes shadowed, hair still damp from a rushed shower, shoulders hunched with the kind of burden that refuses release. He tosses his bag onto the floor. It lands hard, skidding a few inches, and he doesn’t bother to pick it up.

The exhaustion rolls off him in waves. Like static, like heat.

Viktor doesn’t say anything.

But he stiffens. Doesn’t greet Jayce, doesn’t even dare to glance his way. He turns back to the interface and powers it on with cold precision, fingers moving a little too crisply across the keys. Controlled. Measured.

Jayce notices.

The silence grows thick between them—dense and prickling, burdened with everything unspoken. Finally, Jayce clears his throat, voice quieter than usual.

“Hey. About the, uh… sandwich. And tea.”

Viktor doesn’t look up. “I hadn’t noticed,” he lies, fluid as breath, as if the words cost him nothing.

“Liar. You looked like someone revoked your research funding.”

Still, Viktor keeps his eyes locked on the screen. A faint warmth slithers on the back of his neck then, betraying him with the subtlety of a blush he doesn’t want to have.

Jayce scratches the shell of his ear, sheepish now. “I pulled an all-nighter finishing my capsule proposal. It was a disaster. Formatting issues, corrupted files, last-minute revisions—one of those nights.” He exhales, like he’s been holding the sentence in for hours. “I barely had time to shower, let alone assemble my usual gourmet masterpieces for you.”

That earns Viktor’s full attention.

There’s something—something strangely tender—about it all. Jayce had come in furious, shoulders knotted with exhaustion, every movement brimming with stress. And yet, in all that chaos, the first thing he thought to do was to apologize for a missing sandwich and a thermos of tea.

Viktor feels it then, low and sudden, a warmth blooming in his chest—quiet, unfamiliar. Something he does not yet recognize the shape of. Only that it expands in the space between them, softening the edges of the morning.

Jayce shrugs, voice lighter now. “Anyway. Just wanted to say—I’ve been the Sandwich and Tea Phantom all along. Shocking revelation, I know.”

There’s a pause. Then Viktor, in his usual sarcastic cadence, replies, “Oh, really? I assumed I hallucinated them. Brought on by my starvation and prolonged exposure to your voice.”

Jayce lets out a low snort, half amusement, half relief. He watches Viktor for a heartbeat longer—something unreadable flickering behind his eyes—then turns away, unpacking his tools in silence.

He doesn’t press.

And Viktor doesn’t say thank you.

But later, after Jayce has gone and the lab has fallen into its familiar hush, Viktor finds a small pack of dried fruit resting beside his laptop. Not a sandwich. But close enough.

A peace offering, unwrapped and unspoken.

And when Jayce walks in the next morning, hair tousled, a sandwich in one hand and a thermos of tea balanced in the other, Viktor takes them without hesitation.

Like nothing ever went missing.

Like this, somehow, has always been part of their routine.

On one particularly warm afternoon, when Viktor is certain Jayce isn’t looking, he slips a small note into the front pocket of his messenger bag.

Scrawled in his careful, spidery hand, it reads:

‘Thank you, Jayce — V’

Just that. Nothing more. Nothing less.

But it lingers, like warmth after touch.

Chapter Text

The library is too bright for Viktor’s mood.

All around him, students speak in whispers or in silence. Pages turn like clockwork, time passing in seemingly paper-thin increments. Fingers dance across keyboards in the steady cadence of academic anxiety, a mechanical rhythm, each keystroke a quiet cry before the dreaded exam week. The air is thick with tension—less reverence, more survival. There is no room here for distraction; or worse, for Viktor’s spiraling thoughts.

At the far corner, tucked between the Calculus and Applied Mechanics section, Viktor sits stiffly at one of the long study tables, spine straight, pen in hand, notebook open to a page scribbled with chain rules and integrals. Across from him slouches Giopara—a first-year mechanical engineering student, and currently Viktor’s most frustrating tutoring assignment.

Giopara is all bronzed skin and obnoxious confidence. His smile is bright and toothy, his crisp uniform unbuttoned one too many. The scent of his cologne claws at the air, too loud, too sweet, too present. His hair is slicked into place with something glossy and expensive, glinting beneath the library lights like oil on water.

The boy reminds Viktor, maddeningly, of Jayce.

Only dimmer. Less substance, more volume. As if someone sculpted Jayce from the echo of a memory and forgot to include the equations.

“Okay, so,” Giopara begins, drumming his fingers on the edge of his notes. “If I just cancel the derivative here—” He draws a line across the fraction like a five-year-old slashing at a coloring book, “—then it’s just one, yeah?”

Viktor stares at the page. Then at Giopara.

“No,” he says flatly. “That’s not how derivatives work. You’ve cancelled the variable, not the function.”

“But the x’s cancel.” The boy insists. His brows furrow in utter conviction.

Viktor pinches the bridge of his nose, inhales deeply. “This is not high school algebra, Giopara. You cannot simply ‘cancel’ things because they look similar.”

“Okay, okay,” the boy mumbles, flipping back a page. “But this professor makes absolutely no sense! He talks like a microwave—just, like, beeping formula. I swear he summoned a demon during yesterday’s lecture.”

“That demon,” Viktor says with deadpan precision, “was the chain rule. And it is not your enemy if you try to understand it.”

“You should tutor the professor,” Giopara mumbles, leaning back in his chair. “Bet even he can’t stand that tone of yours.”

Viktor levels him with the expression of someone contemplating arson. “Would you like to fail your exam, then?”

Giopara just grins. “I dunno, man. You seem extra cranky today. I thought tutoring was your thing.”

Viktor doesn’t reply.

His fingers drum a restless rhythm against the tabletop, mind not on Giopara, not really. His thoughts keep circling back to the growing pile of notes festering on his dorm desk, still untouched. To the Advanced Thermodynamics major exam looming in three days—an exam that determines forty percent of his grade.

He hasn’t had time. Not enough. It slips through his grasp like water through cracked glass—lost between the Innovator’s Competition, Heimerdinger’s erratic summons, the relentless churn of tutoring sessions, and the exhausting repetition of lab rotations. He is stretched thin—thinner than his patience, thinner than breath in a cold room.

His thoughts skip like misaligned gears—stuttering, spiraling, seizing under pressure.

With effort, he drags himself back, blinking at Giopara’s worksheet as if emerging from underwater. The ink blurs at the edges, but he forces stillness into his hands, forces quiet into the chaos clawing at the back of his mind.

“Try it again,” Viktor says tightly. “From the top. Don’t skip steps this time.”

The boy grumbles, reciting under his breath as he scrawls with a neon orange gel pen. “Function of a function... derivative of the outside... multiply by the derivative of the inside... ugh.”

Viktor watches him struggle, equal parts exhausted and empathetic. “Slow down. Stop trying to guess the answer. You need to understand the logic.”

“I don’t get logic,” Giopara mutters. “I get vibes. Numbers should vibe, you know?”

Viktor blinks. And for a moment, entirely against his will, he thinks of Jayce once more—Jayce smirking behind his lab goggles, spinning a pen between his fingers, saying things like "math is just flirting with variables until they give up their secrets”.

“You know,” Viktor whispers before he can stop himself, “you really remind me of someone.”

“Well, that’s a smile on your face,” the boy looks at him with mischief dripping in his eyes. “Can’t help but wonder who I remind you of.”

Viktor opens his mouth to retort—then his laptop pings.

A new email. The notification flashes at the corner of the screen like a curse.

From: [email protected]

Subject: URGENT: Assistance Required in Lab A3

Dear Viktor,

Apologies for the short notice. I need immediate assistance with a thermal resonance stabilization trial in Lab A3. Your previous work on the hex-spatial containment module makes you the most qualified assistant. Please come as soon as you are able.

Professor Heimerdinger

Viktor exhales a ragged, aching sound and folds in on himself, forehead cradled in his palms as if his own hands might keep his skull from breaking apart. The throb at the base of his head has been creeping in for the past hour, sharp and rhythmic—too familiar to mistake. A migraine, blooming like lightning behind his closed eyelids, pulsing in sync with his heartbeat. It makes the overhead lights feel too bright, the air too loud, even the silence pressing in from the library stacks unbearable in its density.

He breathes in, shallow. Then again, slower—forcing calm, forcing stillness, forcing his thoughts into neat columns even as his brain tries to liquefy itself in real time. His fingertips rub slow circles over the hinge of his brow.

“Yikes,” Giopara says, peeking over. “That the sound of a breakdown?”

“I don’t have time for this,” Viktor mutters into his palms.

“Cool. I’ll just teach myself calculus and cry into a bag of chips.”

Viktor lifts his head with a long breath, pushing his chair back. His eyes are ringed with shadows, jaw tight with the stress of too many deadlines and not enough hours in the day.

“I have to go,” he says curtly. “You’ll review problems 3 through 7 and submit them to my inbox by midnight.”

“What am I, your student?” Giopara calls after him as Viktor gathers his things.

“Yes,” Viktor snaps. “Unfortunately.”

Giopara grins, holding up a peace sign. “Later, Professor Doom.”

Viktor doesn’t look back. His footsteps echo across the marble floor as he heads for the lab, every muscle in his body buzzing with tension.

Deadlines. Demands. Equations blurring at the edges of his vision.

If he doesn’t snap soon, it’ll be a miracle.

The familiar hiss of pressurized valves greets Viktor the moment he steps inside Lab A3, followed by the subtle whine of a hex-core generator coming online. Overhead, the lights sputter into brilliance, splitting the shadows and carving a jagged ache behind his eyes. It feels like someone is slowly driving a spike through his right temple, the ache pulsing in time with the thrum of the lab’s resonance coils.

He does not stop to grimace.

Heimerdinger is already by the workbench, half-buried in a mess of exposed wiring and thermal arrays, nose nearly touching a panel etched with miniature hexplates.

“Ah, there you are!” Heimerdinger calls without looking up. “Punctual, as always. Good, good. We’re at a delicate threshold—just nearing stabilization of the hexcore’s thermal buffer, but the interface keeps spitting out irregularities in the containment module.”

Viktor nods silently and moves to the console. He slides his satchel off his shoulder and sets it down with care, ignoring the gnawing emptiness in his stomach. He skipped lunch—no time, no appetite, and the tension knotting his spine leaves no room for food.

He squints at the data. The numbers blur slightly in his eyes before settling, like a stubborn camera lens snapping into focus. He tightens his grip on the edge of the counter until the faint dizziness fades.

“Have you adjusted the coolant regulation node?” he asks.

“Yes, yes,” Heimerdinger replies, wiping his goggles with a microfiber cloth. “But the override temperature keeps climbing past the safe margin. I’ve rewritten the modulation protocol twice.”

Viktor rolls his sleeves up and taps at the controls, each keystroke deliberate, slow—his head is starting to buzz, thoughts drifting like smoke in still air. “Then we’re missing something mechanical. The software’s responding fine. It must be the hexplate—probably a microfracture in the inner hexcore. I’ll recalibrate the relay manually.”

“Excellent,” Heimerdinger says brightly, stepping aside.

For the next twenty minutes, they work in mostly silence, the only sounds the occasional hiss of vapor lines and the tap of metal tools on alloy. Viktor barely speaks. He can’t. He’s afraid that if he opens his mouth, the pressure in his skull might come pouring out in the form of bile or incoherent equations.

Still—he works.

Focus narrows the pain to a point, like a scalpel slicing through the fog. The relay clicks into place. Readings begin to level.

“See?” Heimerdinger says, peering over his shoulder. “Excellent, Viktor. Your calculations are sharp as ever.”

Viktor exhales softly through his nose, resisting the urge to slump. “They’re functional.”

“Functional…” Heimerdinger echoes, before turning to clean his goggles again. “You and Jayce seem more… functional too, these days.”

The comment makes Viktor pause. Just long enough for the migraine to surge again, briefly blinding.

He blinks it back. “Come again, Professor?”

“Oh, nothing scandalous,” Heimerdinger assures with a chuckle. “Only—I’ve observed a certain ease between you two recently. Less shouting. Fewer insults across the lab benches. Eating in the physics lab, too, if my eyes weren’t deceiving me.”

Viktor’s ears heat immediately, but he pretends to be very interested in tightening a few loose screws. “We’re collaborating,” he says stiffly.

“Yes, but you’ve been paired before and I distinctly remember Jayce nearly electrocuting a capacitor out of spite.”

“That was... an isolated incident.”

Heimerdinger chuckles again, and then, with a gentler tone: “What do you think of him, Viktor? Truly?”

It’s such a simple question. Viktor hates it.

He sets the screwdriver down—slower than necessary, deliberate in a way that betrays his unease. His hands are too warm. His head throbs at the temples. But the truth rises up anyway, raw and begrudging, scraped from somewhere he does not often go.

“I used to think he was nothing more than a showman. All noise. No depth. Just charm, and brilliance that came too easily to be taken seriously.”

“And now?” Heimerdinger prompts.

Viktor’s throat feels tight. He’s not used to speaking like this, not even to himself.

“Now…” He presses his palm to the side of his head, thumb at his temple. “Now I know he’s a showman and a scientist. He listens. Jayce—he cares more than he lets on. And he’s not... stupid. He’s infuriating. Loud. But not stupid.”

The professor’s silence is not judgmental. Merely waiting.

Viktor sighs, shoulders sagging like something heavy has been wrestled out of him. “He’s good. Better than I gave him credit for. And he’s trying. I see that now.”

Heimerdinger’s expression softens into something knowing. “Well,” he says kindly, “that’s something, isn’t it?”

Viktor doesn’t answer. He’s already returning to the panel, typing in new data—pretending the moment didn’t happen.

But inside, something small and electric shifts beneath the pain.

Maybe it is something.

The clock reads 02:04 AM.

His desk is a clutter of notes and worn textbooks, ink-streaked problem sets layered over multiple graphs and notes scribbled with formula so densely packed, even he can’t remember writing them. His back is hunched, his legs curled under his desk chair, and he’s been working for so long that the muscles between his shoulder blades ache like they have fossilized.

The remains of an instant cup noodle sit abandoned to his left, the broth cooled into a dull, oily film that clings to the edges like old grease. He prods at it absently with a chopstick, more out of habit than hunger. One bite had tasted like cheap sodium and cardboard. The rest hadn’t been worth finishing.

His eyes burn—overworked and underslept. Each blink feels like dragging sandpaper over skin. His vision tunnels at the edges, clearing only after a slow, deliberate squint. Beside him, the desk lamp gives off a faint, metallic buzz—persistent and grating, like a wasp caught in a jar.

Viktor recognizes the signs. There’s a flu waiting just under the surface of his skin, humming slow and steady behind his eyes. His joints ache like bad machinery.

He refuses to acknowledge it. Viktor does not have time for illness. He barely has time for himself.

He’s in the middle of redrawing a diagram when his phone buzzes once. A soft rattle across the wooden desk.

Jayce.

Of course it’s Jayce.

He sighs through his nose and unlocks it, expecting a meme, or worse, a dumb pun about particle acceleration.

Instead—

(02:07 AM): hey

(02:07 AM): you awake?

(02:07 AM): No. Busy. Studying for Thermo exam.

(02:07 AM): okay okay but it’s kinda important

(02:07 AM): Heimerdinger dropped by the lab earlier

(02:07 AM): i was running our latest diagnostic script and he wanted to see initial results

(02:08 AM): there’s something weird about the oxygen saturation variable

(02:08 AM): the scanner reported inconsistent values when i toggled between simulation and live reading

(02:08 AM): thought it was a latency issue, but it might be an error in the code

Viktor squints at the screen. That variable was his configuration. If something’s wrong, it means he missed something.

It means he has to check it.

(02:08 AM): can we meet in the morning? won't take long

(02:08 AM): just a quick troubleshoot, i promise

(02:09 AM): you can throw a wrench at me after

Viktor stares at the screen. His migraine lingers in his skull. His exam reviewer is only half-read. His notes are a mess. His nose is starting to clog, and his knees ache from being locked in the same position for too long. His exam is in two days. His eyelids feel too heavy.

But—

He pictures Jayce, alone in the lab earlier, confused and stubbornly determined. Thinks about the device—their device—and how fragile progress can be when left to uncertainty overnight.

So, he exhales.

(02:10 AM): Fine.

(02:10 AM): Eight-thirty sharp.

(02:10 AM): If you’re late, I’m locking you out of the room.

(02:10 AM): deal

(02:10 AM): get some rest v, you sound like you’re typing from a deathbed

(02:10 AM): I am typing from a deathbed.

Viktor’s fingers pause over the keyboard. He hesitates—long enough for the cursor to blink thrice, steady and expectant. Then, carefully:

(02:11 AM): And Jayce?

(02:11 AM): yes, v?

(02:11 AM): Bring tea.

(02:11 AM): you need not ask :)

Viktor lets the phone fall face-down onto the desk and presses a knuckle against his lids.

He returns to his notes with a headache resting at the back of his skull, chest tight with the weight of a hundred things unfinished.

“Show me the problem,” Viktor says the moment he steps into the physics lab.

No greeting. No pause. Just the sharp precision of someone running on frayed edges and something that resembles collapse.

His fever is yet to break. If anything, it had burrowed deeper during the night, curling in his bones like a quiet, smoldering parasite. Morning greeted him not with light, but with weight—a dense, invisible fog pressing into his chest, turning breath into labor and thought into syrup. His skin is pale and paper-thin, as though illness had taken a brush to him and painted absence where color used to live.

Jayce blinks at him, momentarily caught off guard by the briskness of it—the coat not even off Viktor’s shoulders yet, bag still slung across one arm.

“Well, good morning to you too,” Jayce mutters, dry, holding up his hands in mock surrender. “Don’t strain anything. I’m just so happy you made time in your busy schedule to grace me with your presence.”

Viktor barely glances at him as he moves across the room, scanning the data sheet Jayce left on the terminal. “I don’t have time for this. Where’s the error?”

Jayce frowns. “Okay. Someone’s a bundle of sunshine today.”

He tries to brush it off. Tries to keep it light. But something tugs at him. A slowness in the way Viktor moves, too controlled, too deliberate. The kind of stillness that isn’t calm but effort—an act of preservation.

Viktor’s shoulders are hunched, not from fatigue alone, but from something denser, heavier. And when he leans over the terminal, Jayce can see the tension in his jaw, the pallor of his skin under the fluorescent lights.

“V…” Jayce’s voice gentles, his bravado flickering out like a wet match. “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” Viktor snaps, too quickly. His voice has an edge that wasn’t there before—sharp and exhausted, like glass stretched too thin.

Jayce stares. “You don’t look fine.”

Viktor slams the terminal keys harder than necessary. “I said I’m fine, Jayce. Just show me the issue so I can fix it and go.”

“You sure? Because you’re a little paler than usual and you’re moving like someone lit your spine on fire.”

Viktor turns to him then—fully, finally—and his eyes are bloodshot, his expression carved from frustration and pressure and some kind of sickness that clearly hasn’t let him go for hours.

“Do you think I don’t know what I look like right now?” Viktor hisses. “Do you think I want to be here looking like this? While you sit around playing technician with problems you could’ve solved yourself if you bothered to think for more than two seconds?”

Jayce takes a step back, mouth falling open. A dagger wedges itself in the empty yawning just beneath his ribs.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“I have a dozen deadlines breathing down my neck,” Viktor continues, voice rising with each word. “I have to study for a major exam worth forty percent of my grade, manage Heimerdinger’s expectations, tutor three freshmen who don’t know what a capacitor is, and somehow still produce a functioning prototype that won’t blow up in front of the Dean. So forgive me, Jayce, if I don’t have the patience for your games today.”

“I wasn’t playing games!” Jayce snaps back. “I was worried. I asked if you were okay, not if you wanted to fight.”

Viktor laughs, sharp and humorless. “You were worried? Oh, do spare me your concern. It’s easy to worry when you’re always standing at the top, isn’t it?”

Jayce’s hands curl into fists at his sides. “Where the hell is this coming from, Viktor?”

Viktor turns back to the terminal, muttering something under his breath, and Jayce’s patience snaps.

“What? All this—” Jayce gestures wildly, breath coming fast now, “all this self-destruction just to rank second to me?”

The words are out of his mouth before he can withdraw them. They hang in the space like smoke. Acrid and irreversible.

The silence that follows is heavy. One that refuses release, a repentance.

Viktor’s fingers still over the keyboard. He doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak. The only sound is the quiet, mechanical hum of the lab—a sterile, indifferent witness.

Jayce can feel the regret already tightening in his throat. He hears what he’s said, over and over, like a broken audiotape that plays only to torment his mind. Viktor, who works harder than anyone Jayce has ever known. Who runs on tea and grit and unrelenting will. Who shows up even when it would be easier not to. Who never wishes for recognition, only excellence.

And Jayce—furious, flailing, stupid—has weaponized that effort like a blade and stabbed Viktor straight in his chest.

Viktor exhales, slow and quiet. He looks at Jayce for a long, unreadable moment. There’s no anger in it. No fire. Just something resigned. Hollowed.

“Of course,” Viktor says simply.

And then he turns.

Leaves.

Jayce doesn’t move.

The door swings shut behind Viktor with a soft click. Not a slam. Not a dramatic exit. Just the kind of quiet that feels worse than anything else.

Jayce stands there, alone, heart pounding, adrenaline still spiking in his veins. But there’s no one to fight anymore.

And it hurts.

It hurts more than he wants to admit—not because Viktor walked away, but because they never meant to hurt each other. Neither of them. This, Jayce knows with certainty. That’s the part that breaks him. That beneath the sharp words and the noise of frayed tempers, there’s a knowing. Carving pieces of themselves into the things they believe in, and forgetting—again and again—that they’re still human underneath all that striving.

They were both just exhausted. Too wired and stretched thin and aching from places they never talk about. And instead of reaching, instead of resting, they bled all that anger into the person closest to reach.

Jayce drags a hand through his hair, jaw clenched.

‘Hurt people hurt people’, his mother once whispered to him; his small, trembling body swathed in the familiar warmth of her arms.

And god, do they know how to hurt.

The tea Jayce steeped earlier sits atop Viktor’s workstation, silent, growing colder by the minute.

Jayce sends the first series of messages that same night. It's quiet in his dorm, the only sound the hum of the heater and the sporadic, distant bursts of laughter slipping from the paper-thin walls.

His thumbs hesitate over the keyboard only briefly before he types:

(10:52 PM): hey.

(10:52 PM): i’m sorry.

(10:53 PM): i shouldn’t have said what i said.

(10:53 PM): i was angry and stupid and you didn’t deserve that.

(10:53 PM): not even close.

(11:08 PM): i know you’re probably still pissed.

(11:08 PM): or tired. or both.

(11:08 PM): just wanted to say that i meant what i said before, the good parts.

(11:08 PM): i think what we’re building is brilliant. and i still want to finish it. with you.

The reply never comes.

But Jayce tells himself that maybe Viktor just hasn’t read it yet. Maybe he’s buried under his Advanced Thermodynamics notes, or asleep, or just too drained to care. It’s not personal.

The next morning, he checks the lab. Still no Viktor.

The chair where he usually sits is empty. His notes gone. The whiteboard untouched.

Jayce leaves the lights on anyway.

That night, the silence weighs too much.

(09:21 AM): good luck on the thermo exam

(09:21 AM): you’ll do great

(09:21 AM): i hope you kick my ass

The typing bubble never appears.

Jayce throws himself into other things: organizing their shared research folders, updating the project log, labeling wires he knows Viktor would redo out of spite just to correct him. He stays in the lab long after the city begins to fold itself into night, as if his lingering might summon something—someone—back.

Then, two days later, he sees him.

Across the courtyard, framed by the cold blur of mid-morning light, Viktor stands before the campus café, scowling at the automated tea dispenser as though it had personally wronged him. His coat is pulled too tightly around thin shoulders; his eyes, those restless, sharpened things, flick over the screen like he’s solving a problem no one else can see.

He looks exhausted. But he is moving. Breathing. Still stitched into this world by some stubborn, threadbare grace. Still… Viktor.

Jayce doesn’t approach. He stays rooted on the other side of the square, hands deep in his coat pockets, heart thudding against the silence. A thousand words rise like steam in his throat—warm, fragile, evaporating before they ever reach the air.

When he reaches his dorm, he texts:

(06:03 PM): saw you on campus earlier

(06:03 PM): you were at the cafe by the east hall

(06:03 PM): you looked like you were arguing with the tea machine

(06:03 PM): was that chamomile?

(07:18 PM): anyway

(07:18 PM): you looked okay

(07:18 PM): i was glad.

That night, Jayce doesn’t sleep. He lies awake under the sterile blue light of his desk lamp, watching shadows stretch along the ceiling. The sheets twist beneath him like wires. Every few minutes, he glances at his phone, half-expecting something to change.

It never does.

But still, at 2:26 AM, he sends:

(02:26 AM): i miss working with you.

(02:26 AM): the lab’s too quiet without you insulting my code.

(02:26 AM): feels wrong.

The days blur, like watercolors left too long in the rain. A lecture. A lab rotation. Jayce moves through them all with that same hollow rhythm, like a wind-up machine solely running on gasoline. He keeps checking the chat. Nothing.

A day later, he tries again.

(04:20 PM): i know you’re probably drowning in work and exams

(04:21 PM): but take care of yourself, alright?

(04:21 PM): even if that means ignoring me forever

(07:02 PM): also

(07:02 PM): if you’re eating nothing but vending machine sandwiches again or those unhealthy instant cup noodles i swear to god i will find you and drag you to a real meal

(07:02 PM): just kidding, you can eat whatever you want

(07:02 PM): you don’t owe me anything

Jayce finds the note Viktor left on the front pocket of his messenger bag one late afternoon.

Folded once, clean and deliberate. He doesn’t open it right away. His thumb presses the fold, breath held in the way one braces before stepping into memory. Then, slowly, carefully, he unfolds it.

Viktor’s handwriting. That strange, elegant slant. Jayce knows it immediately, the way one knows the shape of an old scar.

Thank you, Jayce — V

Jayce sits down. He reads the note again. And again. Each time it sinks a little deeper, like a stone dropped through still water.

And he laughs, softly. Because of course Viktor would leave this quietly and without ceremony. Of course he would tuck gratitude into the smallest pocket, certain Jayce would find it only when he was ready.

Jayce folds the note back up. Slides it into his palm and presses it to his chest, just for a moment.

Outside, the light begins to fade. The shadows grow longer, reaching like hands toward the past. And in the quiet, the lab breathes with him—grieving gently, faithfully, as if it too remembers the sound of Viktor’s voice.

The silence stretches on.

Jayce sits on the edge of his bed that night, bent forward, elbows on his knees. The air in his dorm feels heavy, thick with the weight of everything he cannot say. The clock ticks past one in the morning.

There is no logic to the message that sits at edge of his fingertips. It isn’t timed. It isn’t calculated. It just spills out of him—honest and bare.

(01:43 AM): i miss you, viktor.

The hallway is already crowded when Jayce arrives—students pressed shoulder to shoulder, necks craned, the air buzzing with nerves and half-held breath. The results have been posted on the board outside of the Advanced Thermodynamics lecture hall, the final ranking typed in bold, daunting font.

Jayce exhales slowly through his nose and joins the crowd, letting the low murmur of chatter wash over him. He hears someone celebrating. A couple of steps from him, someone else is groaning into their hands. A girl near the front curses under her breath, her friend rubbing slow, sympathetic circles on her back.

Jayce searches the space automatically—scans the heads, the huddled shoulders, the worn-out backpacks slung low. Nothing. No sharp profile leaning against the wall with a scowl and a pencil in hand.

Viktor isn’t here.

Jayce’s stomach twists, just a little.

He moves closer.

The sheet is creased at the corners, already smudged from the brush of too many hands. His eyes find the top of the list before anything else.

#1 — Jayce Talis

It should feel good. It usually does. The brief surge of relief, the quiet, smug kind of satisfaction that says you earned this. But today it rings hollow. Pointless. Without Viktor to rival him, victory does not mean anything.

His gaze moves immediately down the list, searching—not for his name, but the other one. The only other one that ever really mattered.

Viktor—

He stops reading.

#9 — Viktor (Surname Unlisted)

Ninth.

Jayce’s heart splinters, violent and breathless, as if something has just dropped from a great height and shattered inside his chest.

Ninth.

No matter how many times he reads, the name stays where it shouldn’t—fixed, final, irreversible. Viktor, printed cleanly beside a number that doesn’t belong to him. It feels wrong in a way that language can’t soften.

Viktor, who sharpens equations like blades. Who treats precision like prayer. Who has never placed below second in anything, ever. Viktor, who builds miracles with one hand and balances two jobs with the other, who works until the bones in his spine protest and still shows up with unyielding brilliance—he’s ninth.

The number rings in Jayce’s head like a warning bell. A crack in something sacred.

Jayce takes a step back from the board, the hallway noise dulling to a low, indistinct buzz around him. Someone claps him on the shoulder, congratulates him on placing first. He nods, automatically, blindly. His thoughts are somewhere else—spiraling through late nights in the lab, the strain in Viktor’s voice, the way his shoulders never quite relaxed, the silence that followed him out the door when they last spoke.

Because this—this drop in rank—it’s not just numbers. It’s not just a bad day. For Viktor, this is the consequence of something breaking. Something giving out beneath the weight of everything he’s been trying to carry.

Jayce suddenly feels sick. He can’t stop picturing Viktor sitting at his desk, head pounding, hands shaking, unable to concentrate. He sees the missed meals, the sleepless nights, the too-tight grip on a pencil as he studies at three in the morning. He sees himself, too—snapping, yelling, hurling words he didn't mean like weapons. And now all that pressure, all that pain, has finally tipped.

Ninth.

Jayce swallows hard against the thickness rising in his throat.

He turns from the board, the paper still burned into his mind. And all he can think—over and over, like a prayer—is that this isn’t victory.

It’s a wound. One he helped open.

Chapter Text

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Subject: Sincere Apologies, A Bulleted Proposal, and Science

Dear Viktor,

Greetings! I hope this email finds you well.

I wanted to extend a formal apology for what happened between us in the physics lab. I realize now that texting you incessantly at strange hours was perhaps not the best medium for sincerity, so here I am, writing like a scholar in exile.

The truth is: I said things I didn’t mean. Harsh things. Unkind things. Things that used your strength against you, when it’s that very strength that inspires me most.

And I think (no, I know) you didn’t mean your words either. Or at least, not all of them. I think we were both just tired. And instead of leaning on each other, we collapsed inward. It was pain, disguised as anger. And I’m sorry for letting mine cut you.

That said, I don’t want this to be how our story ends. Not when we’ve built something good together. Something real.

So I propose the following:

Meet me at the physics lab tomorrow, 10:00 AM sharp. No pressure.

Should you come, you’ll find:

• One (1) freshly made chicken sandwich, carefully constructed with what I assume are your preferred sandwich specifications,
• One (1) perfectly brewed, piping-hot thermos of chamomile tea,
• And one (1) deeply remorseful co-inventor who promises to shut up and listen.

No code debates. No schematics. Just a proposal to reconcile.

Whatever you decide, you don’t owe me anything. But I hope we get to fix this—maybe even make it better.

Sincerely,

Jayce Talis

Head Idiot in Charge™

Co-creator of cool things | Breaker of fragile hearts | Former sandwich skeptic, now sandwich devotee

P.S. I fixed the issues with the oxygen saturation variable. You might want to see.

Viktor doesn’t realize he’s fallen asleep until his migraine jolts him awake.

It’s sharp, visceral—burrowing deep and gnawing without pause. This relentless headache, the one that began the morning he walked out of the physics lab and left Jayce alone, doesn’t just linger. It pesters, constant and insistent, like a gnat trapped beneath his skull, buzzing at the edges of thought. It pulses at his temples, presses down the nape of his neck, and coils around the base of his spine like wire drawn too tight to breathe.

Viktor’s breaths are shallow. He presses his fingers against his brow, willing the pressure away. But nothing helps. Not the tea. Not the sleep he’s not getting. Not even the silence, which used to be his refuge but has now turned traitorous—too still, too loud, too empty.

(01:52 AM): Mel, do you know where I can buy a gun?

(01:54 AM): sometimes i can’t help but wonder if you’re studying to be a scientist or piltover’s most wanted convict

(01:54 AM): I have a migraine that will never go away. I’d rather shoot myself in the fucking head than endure this.

(01:54 AM): you’ve had that headache since what?

(01:54 AM): a week or two?

(01:54 AM): coincidentally since that big fight you had with talis

(01:54 AM): how much are you willing to bet half that headache is from carrying the weight of your pride?

Viktor rolls his eyes—albeit slight gingerly, because even such a brief gesture sends a pulse of pain behind them. Of course Mel went there. Of course she immediately cut straight into his pride, without mercy nor hesitation.

He exhales through his nose, frowning as he types:

(01:55 AM): Not everything is related to Jayce, Mel.

(01:55 AM): oh, for sure

(01:55 AM): is he still texting you?

(01:55 AM): Not as much the past few days.

(01:55 AM): Although he just sent me an email earlier.

(01:55 AM): One of those overly formal, convoluted ones he loves to make to piss me off.

(01:56 AM): i can’t decide whether i should be impressed or embarrassed for the guy

(01:56 AM): Imagine how I feel.

(01:56 AM): what did he say?

(01:56 AM): The usual. It’s nothing, really.

(01:56 AM): Just an apology and a bulleted proposal to reconcile.

(01:57 AM): who in their right mind refers to “talking” as a “bulleted proposal to reconcile”?

(01:57 AM): god, what do they feed you over there in the engineering department

(01:57 AM): I don’t know, crippling depression and life-long academic trauma?

(01:58 AM): what else did he say

(01:58 AM): That he misses me.

(01:58 AM): Like I said, it’s nothing much.

The typing bubble lingers longer than usual. Viktor recognizes that pause. Mel is thinking, preparing for her next strike.

He leans back in his chair and braces for impact.

(02:00 AM): viktor, let me ask you a question

He sighs.

There it is.

The prelude to doom.

Viktor does not respond yet—just stares at the screen, dreading.

(02:00 AM): between you and talis

(02:00 AM): don’t you think there’s something more going on

(02:00 AM): Don’t start.

(02:00 AM): frankly, i don’t think talis is willing to go through the ends of the earth for someone he just sees as some random classmate

(02:01 AM): Well, we’re not just “some random classmates”.

(02:01 AM): ?

(02:01 AM): We’re lab partners, Mel. We’re literally forced to team up for the Innovator’s Competition.

(02:01 AM): i still don’t think talis will do all the things he does for someone he does not genuinely care about

(02:01 AM): i hate that you’re making me say this

(02:01 AM): surely, even you can tell there’s some feelings involved

Viktor’s eyes dwell on the last message. The words glow faintly on his phone screen with a brightness that aches.

He sits in silence, eyes fixated on the scattered pages across his desk. Diagrams marked with a familiar hand—Jayce’s handwriting, bold and impatient, looping through the margins like it had somewhere else to be but stayed regardless. Notes like: “check this line again, V—might work better if we reroute power here” and “careful here—fragile resistor”.

Little things. But always careful. Always considerate.

Viktor thinks of the sandwiches—homemade, wrapped meticulously in wax paper, each corner folded with a particular edge of attentiveness. The tea, too, brewed differently each time, each blend inching closer to perfection, like Jayce had been studying him through every sip. He thinks of the quiet routine stitched into their days, the unspoken ways Jayce reaches out.

He thinks of the way Jayce lingers after their shoulders touch. How his fingers sometimes graze Viktor’s wrist as he passes a tool—just long enough to notice, never long enough to name. Of the way he looks at him, not like a problem to solve, but something worth learning by heart.

(02:05 AM): how can you be a genius and painstakingly dense at the same time?

(02:07 AM): I don’t want to talk about this.

(02:07 AM): i can’t believe reality consists of piltover’s golden boy having feelings for the exact person who absolutely hates his guts

(02:07 AM): i’ll pray for your heart, viktor

He does not write back. There’s no point.

Because Viktor isn’t dense.

He sees it—every glance Jayce thinks goes unnoticed. The way his expression softens when Viktor forgets to hide his exhaustion, when his spine curls inward and his hands won’t stop trembling. He hears it, too, in the offhand jokes that always land a little too gently, the teasing laced with something steadier. Something that resembles affection.

He knows.

God, he knows.

But knowing doesn’t soften the ache. It sharpens it.

Because no matter how many probabilities Viktor conjures in his mind—no matter how many variables he adjusts, how many versions he imagines—none of them end well. Not for someone like him. Not with the undercity smog in his lungs and the ruin in his blood. Not when every morning begins with a stiffness in his spine and ends with another part of his body gradually failing him. Not when the world already demands so much of them both.

And certainly not when Jayce shines like he was born of constellations—too bright, too good, too much.

Viktor has never known how to live gently. But he’s learned, over time, how to brace for endings.

And this—this thing between them, however fragile, aching it is—it will inevitably end. It always does. And Viktor is tired of burying the pieces.

So he turns off his phone.

Draws a breath that scrapes like gravel.

And turns back to the silence, to the migraine pulsing at his temples—because at least pain is something he knows how to carry. Something that doesn’t ask anything of him.

Jayce has been here since nine in the morning.

The lab is too quiet, the air too still. Even the familiar hum of the fluorescent lights overhead feels like a countdown, each flicker of light reminding him of the silence he sits in—how long he’s been waiting, hoping, regretting.

He checks his phone. Nothing. No reply to the email he’d sent the night before. No “Okay,” no “Leave me alone,” not even one of Viktor’s trademark passive-aggressive corrections.

Just silence.

The kind that doesn’t sit beside him so much as press its full weight into his lungs. The kind that seeps into his bones. The kind that starts to feel like an answer all in its own.

Jayce has lived with it for almost two weeks now, and still it finds new ways to hollow him out.

Slowly, he leans back against Viktor’s chair, which he had wiped clean this morning out of some stupid desire to make it feel like things could still return to how they were.

He keeps glancing at the door. Hope flickers in short bursts, then collapses.

10:02 AM.

10:08 AM.

He exhales through his nose, jaw tightening. Viktor is never late. Of course he is not coming. Not after everything Jayce said. Everything he weaponized in that awful, exhausted moment—they’d burned that bridge and watched the ashes drift quietly to the floor.

Jayce drags a hand through his hair, defeated. He shifts to stand, to leave, to perhaps punch a wall on the way back to his dorm—

The door opens.

He freezes.

His heart stutters in his chest, caught between disbelief and something painfully raw.

And there, standing in the doorway like a breath pulled too sharply into aching lungs—

Viktor.

Not some dream or a trick of the light.

Real. Tangible. Unmistakable.

His coat still clings to him. His bag slung over one shoulder like it’s weighed down with more than just notebooks. He does not meet Jayce’s eyes. Does not move further in. He just stands there. Worn. Pale. Brilliant. As if time has folded in on itself only to spit him out again.

And then, he speaks. “I don’t know why I’m here.”

The words are not angry. Not sharp. They arrive quieter than Jayce expects, almost brittle—like a confession that had to be pried loose from his chest.

Jayce stands before his mind even realizes the motion. “I’m happy you’re here.”

It is all Jayce can say. It’s the only thing he knows to be true.

For a long moment, nothing moves. Viktor does not cross the room. Does not take off his bag. Does not sit. He just… stands, on what seems to be an invisible precipice, unsure whether to enter or vanish.

And then he starts talking.

“Do you know what it’s like,” Viktor begins, low, “to know that one misstep—one project that doesn’t land, one exam where you slip—is enough to lose everything?”

His fingers tighten around the strap of his bag, knuckles white.

“I came from a place that doesn’t forgive mistakes. I didn’t get here because someone saw potential and opened a door for me. I got here because I clawed my way through it. I had to be twice as good for half the opportunity.”

Jayce says nothing. His pulse drums in his ears.

“To you, this academic rivalry we have—it’s something you enjoy.” Viktor’s voice strains. “A challenge. A game. You joke about it. You placed bets on our rankings. You talk about it like it’s some kind of entertainment.”

Jayce’s brow furrows. “Viktor, that’s not—”

“But to me,” Viktor cuts in, “it’s survival.”

He finally lifts his eyes, and Jayce nearly staggers at the look in them. So much hurt. So much history. A quiet, storming desperation held together by willpower alone.

“I’m on scholarship,” Viktor continues. “If I fall behind an inch, I lose it. I lose everything. I lose my place in this school, in this city. I lose the right to be taken seriously.”

Jayce swallows—and it burns going down. The guilt builds like pressure behind his ribs, like something breaking open.

“So when you joked about how willing I was to self-destruct only to rank second to you, I want you to know what that meant to me.” Viktor’s voice carries the dangerous edge of a dagger. “I can’t afford to lose. Not because I’m afraid of failure, Jayce, but because failure means I disappear.”

Something in Jayce surrenders, sharp and sudden. He steps forward, carefully, as though the wrong move might scare Viktor back into silence.

“I’m sorry for everything I said. It was a moment of anger—but that is not an excuse. You didn’t deserve any of that.” Jayce draws a long breath, then says, “Viktor… I know I messed things up. I hurt you. And I sincerely apologize for that. The truth is, I only leaned into the rivalry because it was the only way I knew how to stay close to you.”

Viktor stills.

“Close to me? Why?” His voice lifts in disbelief. “You’re the golden boy. The one people always believe in. You don’t need me—you don’t have to convince anyone of your worth. You walk into a room and people already know your name. I had to build mine from dust.”

“That’s not fair,” Jayce says, shaking his head. “I never asked for any of that.”

“No,” Viktor says, voice low but unrelenting, “but you benefit from it all the same. Watching you pretend like we were ever standing on equal ground—like this ‘rivalry’ meant the same thing to you as it did to me—it’s exhausting.”

“I never meant for any of this to feel like a game,” Jayce whispers. “I never meant to make you feel small. God, Viktor, you were never small to me.”

Viktor looks at him, breath hitching faintly.

“You are the most brilliant person I have ever worked with. You challenge me in ways no one else ever has—you make me want to be a better person. You—” Jayce swallows, voice dipping, “you matter to me.”

Viktor’s expression flickers. Trembles at the edges. His mouth opens like he wants to argue, but the fight falters.

Jayce steps closer, now only a few feet between them. “This project, the one we’ve been building—it’s not just another prototype to me. I don’t care about winning the competition. I’ve been holding on to it because it means something. Because you mean something. Not just as a partner. Not just as a rival—not even just as a friend...”

His eyes search Viktor’s, as if trying to find the right version of the truth tucked somewhere in the silence between them. “I don’t know when it stopped being about the project. I just know that somewhere along the way, it started becoming about you,” Jayce’s breath trembles slightly, his gaze dropping to the floor. “Viktor, I—”

“Don’t,”

Because the truth is, Viktor knows what Jayce yearns to say. That particular tenderness in Jayce’s eyes, every time he looks at him—all of the emotions they were too stubborn to realize until it splintered them apart—he could not allow himself to hear it, not now. Not when the foundation beneath his feet already feels unstable, when every day is a delicate equation of exhaustion and compromises, when wanting more—wanting Jayce—might tip the balance he’s fought so hard to keep.

Because if Viktor lets the words in, then it becomes real. And if it’s real, it can be lost.

Jayce falters. “Why not?”

“Because I don’t know what to do with it,” Viktor confesses. “Because I can’t afford to carry that weight too.”

Jayce steps even closer. Quiet. Gentle. “Then let me carry some of the weight,”

“That’s the thing, Jayce. I don’t believe I’m allowed to want that.”

“You don’t need permission to want something. Not from me, not from anyone.” Jayce’s throat tightens. He reaches out—not to touch, not yet—but just to be near. Just to be present. “If you want it, that’s enough.”

Viktor doesn’t answer.

Not for a long moment.

Then—slowly, as if the choice itself hurts—he shrugs his bag from his shoulder. It lands at his feet with a dull thud.

He doesn’t sit. Not yet.

But he stays.

Still upright, still unsure, still trembling like he’s trying to decide whether to run or stay.

Jayce doesn’t move either.

They remain like that, two halves of something broken, not yet whole. Only suspended between breath and truth. Between pain and salve.

Until Viktor, barely above a whisper, speaks, “I’m sorry for the things I said to you.”

Jayce gives him the softest smile he can manage. “That’s okay,” he says. “I’m sorry, too. We’ll figure it out. Together.”

And for the first time in what felt like an eternity, the migraine that had shadowed Viktor like an unwelcome ghost softened—no longer gnawing, merely humming—quiet as surrender.

When the afternoon comes, they work in tandem. Not quite as they used to, but close.

The silence between them is softer now—like the hush after a thunderstorm, everything damp and tender. Viktor keeps his eyes on the interface display, fingers moving with methodical purpose as he recalibrates the sensor nodes. Beside him, Jayce is laying out the toolkit, sorting screws and soldering wire into neat rows with a concentration that borders on penance.

They don’t speak much. Not yet. But it’s enough that they’re here.

Together.

It’s awkward in the way healing often is—slow, unsure, almost too delicate to touch. Every movement seems laced with tentative awareness, like both are afraid to say the wrong thing and undo the fragile thread that binds the moment.

Still, Viktor finds himself watching Jayce when he thinks the boy is not looking. The furrow between his brows as he works. The way he chews the inside of his cheek when focused. The faint edge of worry that still clings to him now, like he hasn’t quite forgiven himself.

“I ranked ninth,” Viktor says abruptly, voice low but clear.

A beat. Then, Jayce finally says, “I saw.”

Viktor doesn’t look at him. His hands remain steady on the terminal. “It’s the lowest I’ve ever ranked since I arrived here.”

Jayce sets the pliers down slowly, attention fully on him now. “Viktor…”

“I thought it would ruin me,” Viktor continues, his tone deceptively calm, but there’s a tremor beneath it. A fault line. “I thought… if I didn’t excel—if I wasn’t the best—then what was the point? Who would I be if I wasn’t perfect on paper?”

He presses a key too hard. The screen flickers.

“I’ve spent so long tying myself to numbers,” he says, softer now. “To percentages. To letters. To my place on a list that no one else even sees. And when I ranked ninth… I felt like I had failed something fundamental. Like I had fallen out of orbit.”

Because getting high marks—being top of the class—that’s what was supposed to save him. To carve his name into the concrete of Piltover’s memory. To make sure that even someone from the Undercity had a place here, not by invitation but by force of merit. It was the only currency he trusted, the only thing that had ever paid off.

But even now, after the stumble, after the fall, he is still standing.

And in that brutal clarity, Viktor finally sees it: his grades may open the door, but they are not the only thing that makes him walk through it. They are not the whole of him.

Jayce doesn’t interrupt. He moves closer, quietly, until they’re standing shoulder to shoulder.

“I didn’t break.” Viktor says, “I woke up the next day. I ate. I went to class. And nothing shattered.” His voice trembles despite himself. “It was strange. It was… liberating.”

He finally looks at Jayce. His eyes are ringed with fatigue, but clear.

“I think it had to happen,” Viktor admits. “So I could learn how to stop bleeding for a standard I didn’t choose. So I could… evolve. Stop seeing myself only in terms of output. Of metrics. Of how well I am perceived by people who will never understand what it cost to get here.”

Jayce stares at him for a long moment, “Viktor.”

The way he says his name—soft, steady—almost undoes Viktor.

“Viktor… you’ve spent so long tying your worth to what you can build, prove, fix. But you are not merely the sum of your achievements,” Jayce’s voice is full of something Viktor isn’t used to. Not pity. Not guilt. Just pure, blinding, unabashed care. “You are the most brilliant person I have ever known. But brilliance isn’t the reason you matter. You matter because you’re you, Viktor.

Viktor’s throat works around the weight of that.

“I don’t know how to be anything else other than perfect,” he admits, quiet.

“You don’t have to strive for perfection, Viktor,” Jayce says gently. “There is beauty in imperfections... They make you who you are. An inseparable piece of everything I admire about you"

A silence falls between them again, but it’s not awkward this time.

It feels like understanding.

When Jayce reaches for the prototype, their elbows brush. Viktor doesn’t pull away.

Instead, he breathes easier.

The campus is flushed in amber light. Long shadows stretch over the stone paths, trees rustling faintly in the wind. Jayce walks with one hand in his pocket and the other on his phone, occasionally glancing up to avoid running into yet another lamppost.

There’s a sharp chill in the air that smells like wet earth and the promise of rain. He tugs his coat closer around him.

His phone buzzes—twice.

Vi (05:52 PM): yo golden boy

Vi (05:52 PM): hows ur divorce era going

Vi (05:52 PM): any custody battles over the lab yet

Caitlyn (05:53 PM): Vi, for all the love of things tactful…

Caitlyn (05:53 PM): Jayce, seriously though. How are things with Viktor?

Jayce smiles, thumb hovering over the keyboard. He walks past the courtyard, where a student is struggling to carry five rolls of copper wire. Jayce briefly considers helping—then remembers the last time he did that, the student squealed and asked for an autograph.

He keeps walking.

Jayce (05:54 PM): we talked

Jayce (05:54 PM): like, really talked

Vi (05:54 PM): ooooo juicy

Caitlyn (05:54 PM): Define “really”

Caitlyn (05:54 PM): Did you cry? Did he cry?

Caitlyn (05:54 PM): Did someone throw a wrench?

Jayce snorts.

Jayce (05:55 PM): no tears

Jayce (05:55 PM): well, almost

Jayce (05:55 PM): no wrenches

Jayce (05:55 PM): but i kinda maybe confessed my feelings? haha

He doesn’t see the curb until his toe slams into it. He mutters a curse under his breath, hopping once, phone still glowing in his hand.

The typing bubbles appear instantly.

Caitlyn (05:55 PM): WHAT

Vi (05:56 PM): YOU WHAT

Caitlyn (05:56 PM): You confessed???

Caitlyn (05:56 PM): As in, “I have feelings for you” confessed???

Caitlyn (05:56 PM): Jayce, what did you say???

Caitlyn (05:56 PM): What did he say???

Jayce (05:57 PM): i mean, it was heavily implied with what i said but he didn’t let me finish what i was saying

Jayce (05:57 PM): he didn’t really say no

Jayce (05:57 PM): he just… he seemed scared

Jayce (05:57 PM): scared of what could happen if it did go somewhere

Jayce slows his pace now. The crowds have thinned. Students rush toward dorms and dining halls, their voices distant and blurred. The lamps flicker on one by one, casting honeyed halos over the stone walkways.

He reads the messages he’s written again before continuing.

Vi (05:58 PM): oh no

Vi (05:58 PM): not the “im scared of my own feelings” route

Vi (05:58 PM): he’s gone full tragic genius

Caitlyn (05:58 PM): Jayce, how are you feeling about it?

Jayce (05:59 PM): we’re in this weird in-between

Jayce (05:59 PM): i think we both acknowledge that there’s something more

Jayce (05:59 PM): but viktor is scared, i don’t think he’s ready

Jayce (05:59 PM): but it’s okay, and i'm okay

Jayce (05:59 PM): he came back to the lab and we’re working again

Jayce (06:00 PM): that’s enough for me right now

He presses send, then shoves his phone into his coat pocket, exhaling a long breath that clouds in the cold air. The ache in his chest feels… quieter tonight. But soft. Tender in its aching.

The phone buzzes again.

Vi (06:01 PM): soooooo

Vi (06:01 PM): is the marriage still on or what

The days begin to stitch themselves into something whole again.

Jayce takes to the lab first, most mornings. Viktor still arrives precisely on time, coat clutched in one hand, the faintest ghost of sleep lingering in his eyes. The quiet between them no longer bristles, but gentle. Companionable. A quiet made of wires being stripped, of code being typed, of coffee and tea being shared from mismatched thermos and cup.

Without fail, there’s a homemade sandwich waiting on Viktor’s usual seat.

Wrapped neatly in wax paper. Simple. Familiar.

But now, they come with handwritten notes.

The first is scrawled in blue ink and stuck right on top:

"Not bribery. Just lunch. Don’t starve, you stubborn gremlin."

The second is tucked inside the fold of the wrapper:

"Your hair’s doing the dramatic swoop thing today. Unfair. Please warn others before they fall in love."

The third comes the following Monday, attached with a piece of tape to the thermos beside the sandwich:

"I think you should smile more."

The fourth is the smallest yet, barely a torn scrap of paper wedged under the sandwich like a secret:

"Your hands are really, really beautiful."

Viktor thinks they’re stupid.

He reads each one in the privacy of his seat, rolls his eyes, mutters something acidic under his breath—“sentimental idiot,” or “unbelievable”—but his hands are steady when he folds the note and tucks it between the pages of his private journal. No one knows he keeps them. No one asks.

Jayce never brings them up.

Not even once.

They fall into rhythm again. Wiring. Testing. Viktor hunched over the interface, eyes sharp and calculating. Jayce at the board, sketching diagrams with a blue marker chewed halfway to death. They talk. Sometimes too much, sometimes not at all. Jayce bickers over syntax. Viktor ridicules Jayce’s coding. It’s all familiar again.

The prototype sits on the table, breathing with soft pulses of light. It’s close now. Every test yields cleaner data. Every revision trims the noise. The pieces have begun to speak to each other.

They are a few days, maybe a week, from calling it finished.

Until—

It happens one afternoon, when the light outside the lab windows starts to lean toward the heather glow of dusk. Jayce is cross-referencing data output on the monitor. Viktor is adjusting the sensors on the prototype.

Then the screen glitches.

A new test run finishes—but the numbers don’t make sense.

“Wait,” Jayce mutters. “The input source isn’t stabilizing.”

Viktor’s head snaps up. “What?”

“The readings just jumped by a factor of ten.” Jayce scrolls rapidly through the data logs, fingers moving faster now, a hint of dread creeping in.

“That’s not possible,” Viktor says sharply, already moving towards the monitor. “Nothing changed in the configuration.”

“We already optimized those values yesterday—”

The door swings open.

“Ah!” Heimerdinger exclaims, stepping in with a clipboard nearly the size of his entire torso. He’s beaming, as always, oblivious of the growing storm inside the lab. “Good, good. You’re both here.”

Jayce straightens instinctively. Viktor only offers a vague nod, half of his attention still on the frozen screen.

“I just wanted to let you know,” the professor continues, “that beginning tomorrow, all labs will be closed for one full week. Annual inventory, deep cleaning, pest fumigation—the whole ordeal. You’ll need to clear out your personal items by tonight.”

Jayce blinks. “Wait, an entire week?”

Beside him, Viktor rises a fraction straighter, as if preparing to argue. “Is this posted somewhere?”

“Posted?” Heimerdinger repeats. “Yes! Certainly. On the bulletin board outside the east stairwell. Always a good idea to check the bulletin board, yes? Well then. Good luck, boys!”

He hums a cheerful tune as he totters back out the door, the silence behind him landing like an echo.

Jayce turns slowly to Viktor. “We can’t afford to lose a week.”

“No,” Viktor agrees, already calculating, already plotting a new course. “We can’t. The prototype’s nearly finished, but we still haven’t isolated the error in the input readings. If we wait, we risk forgetting what variables we tweaked.”

And then, in a tone far too casual for the weight of the question, Jayce says:

“Want to continue this in my dorm, then?”

The words hang in the air like static—light and dangerous. Not a dare. Not a joke.

An offering.